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Pralines
1 7/8 cups powdered sugar. 1 cup maple syrup. 1/2 cup cream. 2 cups hickory nut or pecan meat, cut in pieces Boil first three ingredients until, when tried in cold water, a soft ball may be formed. Remove from fire, and beat until of a creamy consistency; add nuts, and drop from tip of spoon in small piles on buttered paper, or mixture may be poured into a buttered tin and cut in squares, using a sharp knife.
The method here is standard soft-ball candy work: a sugar-and-cream syrup boiled to the right stage, beaten until it clouds, then loaded with nuts and dropped before it sets. Everything depends on the temperature of the syrup and the moment you stop beating.
- Soft-ball stageThe cold-water test corresponds to 234-240F on a candy thermometer. Below that the pralines never firm up; above it they turn hard and sandy.
- When to beatLet the syrup stand off the heat and cool somewhat before beating rather than working it at the boil. Stirring a very hot syrup starts large crystals and gives a gritty texture rather than the fine, opaque creaminess wanted.
- "Creamy consistency"Beat only until the gloss dulls and the mixture thickens slightly and holds a faint trail. Past that point it seizes in the pan and cannot be dropped.
- NutsHickory nuts were a common gathered nut in many American kitchens of this period and are now hard to buy; pecans are the usual substitute and are what most people expect in a praline. Toast them lightly first and warm them, since cold nuts chill the candy prematurely.
- Buttered paperParchment or a silicone mat work well. Waxed paper can soften and stick where hot candy sits on it.
- Working quicklyHave the paper laid out and the nuts measured before the syrup comes off the heat. From the end of beating you have perhaps a minute or two of workable candy; setting the pan in a bowl of warm water buys a little more.
- HumiditySugar candy of this kind sets poorly and stays sticky on a damp day. Dry weather helps, and store the finished pieces airtight.
Pralines in the American sense belong to Louisiana, where French confectionery met the pecan; the French original, generally traced to the seventeenth-century household of the Marshal du Plessis-Praslin, was a whole almond in caramelized sugar rather than a soft cream patty. The alternative of hickory nuts is a distinctly northern accommodation: hickories were gathered from farm woodlots across the Northeast and Midwest and cost nothing.