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Choice Chocolate Pecan Pralines
3 cups of granulated sugar, 1 cup of cream, 1 cup of sugar cooked to caramel, 2 squares of Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate, 3 cups of pecan nut meats. Stir the sugar and cream over the fire until the sugar is melted, then let boil to the soft ball degree, or to 2360 degree F. Add the chocolate, melted or shaved fine, and beat it in, then pour the mixture onto the cup of sugar cooked to caramel; let the mixture boil up once, then remove from the fire; add the nut meats and beat until the mass begins to thicken. When cold enough to hold its shape drop onto an oil cloth or marble, a teaspoonful in a place, and at once set a half nut meat on each. Two persons are needed to make these pralines, one to drop the mixture, the other to decorate with the halves of the nuts. The mixture becomes smooth and firm almost instantly. Maple or brown sugar may be used in place of all or a part of the quantity of granulated sugar designated.
A New Orleans-style praline with a caramel base, from one of Walter Baker & Co.'s promotional recipe pamphlets. The work is fast at the end, and the original is right that a second pair of hands helps.
- The temperature"2360 degree F." is a printer's slip for 236°F, the soft-ball stage. Use a candy thermometer and calibrate it in boiling water first; a few degrees low gives a praline that never sets, a few degrees high gives one that crumbles.
- Two sugars, two pansThe recipe quietly asks for two simultaneous operations: 3 cups sugar with the cream boiling to 236°F in one pan, and a separate cup of dry sugar melted to a caramel in another. Have the caramel ready and still fluid before the cream mixture reaches temperature.
- The chocolateBaker's Premium No. 1 was unsweetened chocolate; a square is 1 oz, so use 2 oz of unsweetened baking chocolate. The recipe allows it either melted or shaved fine before it is beaten in.
- CreamPeriod "cream" varied a good deal in fat content; heavy cream is the nearest modern stand-in. Half-and-half will produce a thinner, grainier candy.
- Pouring onto the caramelAdding the hot fudge mixture to molten caramel will hiss and steam violently. Pour slowly down the side of the pan, and let it boil up once only — extended boiling after the caramel goes in drives the sugar past soft ball.
- Beating and droppingBeat only until the gloss dulls and the mass thickens on the spoon. As the original warns, it sets "almost instantly": have parchment or a lightly oiled marble slab cleared and the half pecans counted out beforehand.
- WeatherSugar work of this kind fails on a humid day. Cook on a dry day, or take the syrup one or two degrees higher than 236°F to compensate.
Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts, issued small recipe books throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to promote its chocolate, and this one reaches beyond New England to the pecan praline of Louisiana. The name is generally traced to seventeenth-century France and the household of César, duc de Choiseul, comte du Plessis-Praslin, whose cook is said to have coated almonds in caramelized sugar; the attribution is traditional rather than documented. French settlers in Louisiana are said to have substituted the native pecan and, over time, a soft cream-and-sugar base for the hard candy coating. The chocolate is the outlier — a classic New Orleans praline contains none — and its presence here would suit a book whose purpose was to show housekeepers uses for unsweetened chocolate. The recipe also allows maple or brown sugar in place of all or part of the granulated.