The Sweetest Nut
A walk through the late summer oak woods can be a meditative exercise as the rich smells of sun-warmed leaves and ripening seed heads and the ‘buzzy’ sounds of meadow grasshoppers and cicadas fill the air. The reverie is easily broken; however, when the first walnut or hickory nut sails down from the treetops and lands with a thud nearby. This is after all, the start of the harvest season, and the squirrels are busily sorting through the current year’s crop of nuts and acorns. The result in a good year can be an intermittent rain of hard round objects from high above that occasionally make one feel like they’re walking on marbles. Watch your step and consider wearing a hardhat!
Illinois’ native woodlands are chock-full of nut producing trees. The Midwestern oak-hickory forest community is aptly named due to the dominance of various species of oaks and hickories, but also walnuts and nut-producing shrubs such as hazelnut. During their heyday, when nearly 10 million acres of these productive woodlands existed in Illinois, they provided a rich source of fats and nutrients for deer, elk, turkey, millions of passenger pigeons, and of course, squirrels. They were an important food source for Native American people as well. Acorn meats could be boiled, roasted, and ground into nutritious flour. Walnuts yielded their tasty qualities after the bitter tannins were boiled away; and the most prized nut of all—the hickory nut—provided sweet tasty nutmeats as well as rich sweet oil used in all sorts of cooking.
In his classic book, A Natural History of Trees, Donald Culross Peattie quotes the early American naturalist William Bartram, describing how highly the Creek Indians valued hickory nuts:
I have seen above a hundred bushels of these nuts belonging to one family. They pound them to pieces and then cast them into boiling water, which, after passing through fine strainers, preserves the most oily part of the liquid; this they call by a name which signifies hiccory [sic] milk; it is as sweet and rich as fresh cream, and is an ingredient in most of their cookery, especially homony [sic] and corn cakes.
Among several native species of hickory, two are still commonly found in Chicago area woodlands: the shagbark hickory (Carya ovata) and the bitternut hickory (Carya cordiformis). The name hickory is purportedly derived from an Algonquin word, pawcohicora, which was the Algonquin name for the rich, oily milk made from boiling the ground hickory nuts. Both trees are aptly named, with the bitter tasting nut of one making it less desirable as a source of food, and the flaking bark of the other being an obvious characteristic. The shagbark hickory is the most common species in this area. It is well-adapted to open sunny savannas as well as denser upland woods. It can attain a size of over 100 feet in rich soil, although it is generally somewhat shorter than the wide-spreading oaks with which it shares the forest. The shaggy grey bark is obvious on mature trees, less so on younger ones. Bitternut hickory prefers moister woods in bottomlands along rivers and on north-facing slopes. Its pointed, dull yellow buds, which release a fragrance when rubbed, are a distinguishing characteristic of this tree.
Shagbark hickory is not only more common in northern Illinois but contains the most flavorful nut meat. Most people walking through the woods today don’t realize what a treasure lies before them when walking underneath a large heavily laden shagbark. Many may see the round green golf ball-sized nuts littering woodland trails in early September and assume they are wild windfall apples. Squirrels, which can select the best nuts while still high in the treetops, end up with the lion’s share. We are left with the ones they drop and those loosed by winds and storms before the squirrels can get them. Many nuts that do fall to the ground have been partially devoured by weevil larvae; their eggs having been laid in the ripening nuts by adult weevils in August. The squirrels can somehow tell good nuts from infested ones, possibly judging a nut by its heft or possibly some odor. They drop those with weevil damage.
Anyone serious about nut collecting can figure out ways to beat the squirrels at their game (using a pole to shake limbs and dislodge the nuts) or simply exercising patience and diligence in scouring the woods at the right season to gather as many from the ground as possible and sorting out the good ones soon after. Hickory nuts are armored in a tough four-part green husk. Once this is removed, a cream-colored smooth hard nut is revealed. This must be cracked open to get at the sweet meat inside, generally using a hammer or vise. The nutmeat is extracted using a pointed sharp object. All of this effort involves a level of tedium and patience that eludes many but rewards those willing to work at it.
There was apparently a time, also mentioned in A Natural History of Trees, when rural children gathered for ‘nut cracks.’ These social affairs, like the quilting bees and cider pressings of that era, gave people the opportunity to pool their labor to produce a food item that everyone in the community could then share. Children would use hammers and flatirons to crack open the nuts, and:
As many were eaten at the time as young appetites could endure—which is a great deal—and the rest saved for sale and for future consumption. Quite as important as the nuts at these cracks seemed the kissing games played by the children and the courting that got done among the older boys and girls.
While the sweet nuts would be reason enough to value them, hickory trees possess other valued characteristics that have contributed to their destruction in many parts of the country. Their lumber is esteemed for its durability and strength and was often used to make tool handles, crude door hinges, barrel hoops, and furniture dowels. Hickory also makes superb and very efficient firewood. A cord of split, seasoned hickory will produce nearly as much heat as a ton of anthracite coal. Everyone, of course, has heard of hickory smoked hams, although few today understand the process originally used to produce them. When added to the smokehouse fire, freshly cut, unseasoned hickory produced a rich pungent smoke resulting in the finest hams, bacons, and sausages.
I was once surprised to find a delicious salad I was served at a small farm-to-table bistro in central Wisconsin to be garnished with hickory nuts, which I recognized right away by their rich pecan-like flavor and small size. The waitress confirmed this and explained that a local woman harvests and sells them. Hickory is still put to all of its traditional uses, although not to the extent that it once was. Few of us today have the opportunity to feed a wood-burning stove with seasoned hickory or bother to smoke our own meats with green hickory chips. We all, however, can reap the benefits of a walk in the autumn woods. In addition to the fresh air, exercise, and peace of mind, take home a few foraged hickory nuts. While foraging for wild nuts is about as far removed from our high consumption, fast-food culture as anything imaginable, this is precisely the point of wild foraging. Hickory nuts, like hickory smoke and hickory axe handles, are American originals that can help us to deepen our connections to land and place.
Useful Links:
https://semihomesteadlife.com/harvesting-hickory-nuts/
https://www.seriouseats.com/wild-hickory-nut-shortbread-cookies
