Pralines: How They Cook 'Em in New Orleans
Saveur|Winter 2019-20
Pralines: How They Cook ’Em in New Orleans
Catherine Tillman Whalen
Pralines: How They Cook 'Em in New Orleans

Thirty-five years ago, when Loretta Harrison opened Loretta’s Authentic Pralines in New Orleans’ old Jax Brewery building, she became the first African-American woman to own and operate a praline company in the Crescent City—a distinction she characterizes as relative. “While mine may have been the first brick-and-mortar store here,” Harrison says, “many other entrepreneurial black women preceded me.”

Indeed, free women of color have been selling pralines in the French Quarter since before the Civil War. The history is, of course, complicated. Though street- vending granted these early “pralinières” a means to support themselves, it also required a certain degree of subservient posturing. In Gumbo Ya-Ya, a book of Louisiana folklore published in 1945, the authors noted that “the delicious Creole confections…have been vended by Negresses of the ‘Mammy’ type.” This kind of racist iconography would persist, with at least one local praline brand employing such shameful imagery into this century.

Like so much of New Orleans’ signature cuisine, the praline has its origins in France, or more specifically, in the kitchen of 18th-century diplomat César, duc de Choiseul, comte du Plessis-Praslin, whose chef is said to have invented the eponymous sweet to help his employer woo women. During the late 1720s, Ursuline nuns imported this French version—an almond coated in caramelized sugar—to the Louisiana Territory, where slaves in the colonists’ kitchens were likely responsible for adding butter, cream, and the region’s native pecan to make the recipe what it is today.

This story is from the Winter 2019-20 edition of Saveur.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

This story is from the Winter 2019-20 edition of Saveur.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

MORE STORIES FROM SAVEURView All
Raising a Better Bird
Saveur

Raising a Better Bird

Blue Apron founder Matt Wadiak has moved onto greener pastures, where happy chickens roam free.

time-read
2 mins  |
Fall 2020
One Good Bottle
Saveur

One Good Bottle

Tamara Irish is a natural winemaker. Way natural.

time-read
2 mins  |
Fall 2020
My Not-So-Secret Garden
Saveur

My Not-So-Secret Garden

Good (vegetable-laden) fences make good neighbors in one tiny town.

time-read
4 mins  |
Fall 2020
Pralines: How They Cook 'Em in New Orleans
Saveur

Pralines: How They Cook 'Em in New Orleans

Pralines: How They Cook ’Em in New Orleans

time-read
4 mins  |
Winter 2019-20
My Father's French Onion Soup
Saveur

My Father's French Onion Soup

Postwar Paris had a lifelong influence on James Edisto Mitchell—both as an artist and a cook BY Shane Mitchell

time-read
7 mins  |
Winter 2019-20
Our All-Time Best Recipes
Saveur

Our All-Time Best Recipes

If anyone should know if a recipe’s a keeper, it’s the person tasked with making sense of the original instructions—from the far reaches of Sri Lanka, say, or a famous chef who measures nothing. This might explain why many test kitchen staffers named favorites that their predecessors had tested and recommended. (Though a couple put forth recipes they developed themselves.) And while Saveur never shies away from the oddball authentic ingredient, the fare on the following pages is the stuff we cook at home, over and over again. Consider it global comfort food.

time-read
10+ mins  |
Winter 2019-20
Genever Is the Original Juniper Spirit
Saveur

Genever Is the Original Juniper Spirit

Don’t call it a comeback. Or gin

time-read
5 mins  |
Winter 2019-20
Tree Of Life
Saveur

Tree Of Life

Harvesting the resin of the mastic tree has sustained generations on the Greek island of Chios

time-read
2 mins  |
2018 Volume 3
From Bee To Bottle
Saveur

From Bee To Bottle

On the lush island of Kauai, a local artisan brings mead into modernity

time-read
1 min  |
2018 Volume 3
Worth Her Salt
Saveur

Worth Her Salt

Meet the pioneering female cellar master at one of Spains greatestjamn ibricoproducers

time-read
2 mins  |
2018 Volume 3