Praline Pecans
Take a cupful of well and carefully peeled pecan nuts. Take two cupfuls of brown sugar and half a cupful of water. Let simmer on the fire until it candies. Put in the nuts. Stir them all the time until the sugar adheres to the nuts. Be careful it does not burn. Put in a plate to cool and serve. Do the same thing, but do not turn it. Put them a spoonful at a time in small paper boxes or in pats on a dish. The same thing can be done with peanuts. Peanuts powdered and added to ice cream is delicious.
Sold on the street corners in New Orleans.
The definitive New Orleans praline — pecans suspended in cooked brown sugar — and the version most people picture when they hear the word.
- “Until it candies”Simmer the brown sugar and water to the soft-ball stage, about 235–240°F, before adding the nuts; a candy thermometer removes the guesswork.
- Toast the pecansThe “carefully peeled” pecans are just shelled halves; toasting them first deepens the flavor.
- Stir to setKeep stirring off the heat until the syrup turns creamy and grips the nuts — that clouding is the sugar crystallizing, exactly what you want.
- Don’t let it burnBrown sugar scorches fast; use a heavy pot and moderate heat, and pull it the moment it’s ready.
- Pats or clustersDrop by the spoonful onto parchment — “in pats on a dish” — or into paper candy cups.
- Peanut variationAs the recipe notes, peanuts work too; ground and folded into ice cream, they make a quick praline sundae.
By the nineteenth century the praline had become inseparable from New Orleans, largely through the work of the city’s pralinières — free women of color and, after emancipation, Black women who cooked pralines at home and sold them on the streets of the French Quarter. Working from baskets and doorways, they made the candy a fixture of the city’s life and one of its earliest street foods. The pecan itself is native to the Mississippi Valley, long gathered by Indigenous peoples, so this most Creole of candies is built on a truly local nut.
From page 62 of the 1904 edition.
Original page from the book
