President Andrew Jackson's "Nut Soup"

My thesis is that all presidents are psychopaths, but…some more so than others. Nixon, Roosevelt, even my beloved LBJ — psychopaths. I don’t necessarily need to eat their food to know this, but so far, it has helped. There is, however, one president who might take the cake, and that is Andrew “He Rattled Like Marbles Because of How Many Bullets Were In His Body” Jackson.

Chef Andrew Jackson

Democratic President from Tennessee

As always, I followed the recipe word for word directly from the man who killed individuals in duels and entire Native populations with campaigns, no alterations:

INGREDIENTS

1 gallon hickory nuts in-shell

1 quart hot water

4 tbsp sugar

INSTRUCTIONS

1) Crack 1 gallon hickory nuts, remove the hulls, crush together into a mass.

This took me THREE AND A HALF HOURS. Like, my entire evening. I would not call what I drew “a mass.”

2) Pour 1 quart hot water over the nuts, allow to stand for 10 minutes.

3) Strain, add sugar, and serve hot.

I did have to reheat the soup after I strained and added the sugar, as there was so little liquid that it had cooled off.

Voila! If you want to actually watch me attempt to eat it, go to the CwC Instagram or TikTok. The first thing you will notice is the amount of soup is unbelievably small — this was a function of two things: 1) I started off being very bad at cracking hickory nuts (notoriously hard to crack); 2) At least 1/2 of the nuts ended up being duds. No nutmeat inside. You can imagine how I felt after THREE AND A HALF HOURS, seeing this amount of soup in a bowl.

Verdict:

This is not a soup, it’s a lie. Basically, warm almond milk. FINE. I’ll admit the flavor is nice. I’d prefer it to most nutmilks out there if it hadn’t burned my whole Thursday afternoon just to have me drink it in 12 seconds.