The Story of New Orleans Pralines

This candy was first known as Creole candy.

There are many variations on the story of how the praline came to be, but most of them revolve around the manor house of the 17th-century French diplomat Cesar du Plessis Praslin.

A chef in the kitchen here developed a technique for coating almonds in cooked sugar. 

In France and elsewhere, the word praline is still used as a generic term for any sort of candy made with nuts.

These early confections traveled with Frenchmen to their new colony on the banks of the Mississippi, a land where both sugar cane and nuts were cultivated in abundance.

In local kitchens, Louisiana pecans were substituted for the more exotic almonds, cream was added, giving the candy more body, and a Southern tradition was born.

Even before the Civil War and Emancipation, pralines were an early entrepreneurial vehicle for free women of color in New Orleans.

In 1901, the Daily Picayune (a predecessor to today's Times-Picayune newspaper) described in nostalgic terms the "pralinieres," or older black women, who sold pralines "about the streets of the Old French Quarter." They were often selling pralines on Canal Street near Bourbon and Royal streets and around Jackson Square in the shade of the alleys flanking St. Louis Cathedral.

And in the 1930s, the Louisiana folklorist Lyle Saxon, writing in the book "Gumbo Ya-Ya," documented praline sellers "garbed in gingham and starched white aprons and tignons," or head wraps, fanning their candies with palmetto leaves against the heat and bellowing the sales pitch "belles pralines!" to passersby.

Excerpt taken from I. McNulty who is a freelance food writer and columnist, a frequent commentator on the New Orleans entertainment talk show “Steppin’ Out” and editor of the guidebook “Hungry? Thirsty? New Orleans.”

Recipe for New Orleans Pralines

1 cup light brown sugar, packed

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2  cup light cream

1 ½ cups pecans, halved

2 tablespoons butter

Directions:

1. Combine sugars and cream in a heavy 2-quart saucepan and bring to boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon, until mixture forms a thick syrup.     

2. Add pecans and butter and continue to cook over medium heat, stirring frequently. 

3. Remove sauce pan to a heatproof surface (such as a wire rack) and let cool for 10 minutes.

4. Use a tablespoon to drop rounded balls of the mixture onto sheet wax paper or foil, leaving about 3 inches between each ball for pralines to spread. Allow to cool. Makes about 12 candies.

  

Recipe for Cajun Pralines

1 cup dark brown sugar 1 cup white sugar 1/2 cup evaporated milk 2 tablespoons butter 1/4 teaspoon vanilla 1 cup pecan halves

Directions:

1. Combine the sugar and milk and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally.
2. Add the butter, vanilla and pecans. Cook until the syrup reaches the soft ball stage (238° F).
3. Let cool five minutes, then beat with a wooden spoon until the mixture begins to thicken.
4. Drop by tablespoons onto a well-greased flat surface (aluminum foil works well). The candy will flatten out into large rounds, about three to four inches in diameter. Store in an air tight container.

New Orleans Praliniere circa 1900