Praline (nut confection)

Praline is a sweet food usually made from a mix of almonds and boiled sugar, eaten as a confection or more commonly, an ingredient for other confections. In Louisiana, pecans are almost always substituted for almonds in pralines.

The French, who coined the name, consider praline to be boiled sugar over whole almonds, but in the rest of the world the almonds are ground and the praline is either a powder or a smooth paste. In Germany and Belgium praline means only a filled chocolate of any sort, the English also use this term to some extent.

History

A favourite story of the origins of praline is that the Duke of Plessis-Praslin's cook invented a way to coat almonds with boiled sugar and later retired from the duke's service to make the sweets commercially.