HISTORY
The Praline Ladies THE 18TH CENTURY FREE WOMEN OF COLOR BEHIND NEW ORLEANS’ SIGNATURE SWEET
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By Kirstie Myvett s a child growing up in byvegetables, flowers, blackberries, and Story by Jordan LaHaye • Photos Olivia Perillo New Orleans, one of the freshly-brewed coffee at the various memories I most return markets that dotted the city. Selling to is me, sitting in the pralines was particularly attractive kitchen, watching my grandmother because of the low-cost start up. The make pralines. I can still picture her main ingredient, pecans, were free for ladling the creamy mixture onto wax the taking. paper. I’d wait patiently as each dollop An article in a 1895 edition of The spread and magically cooled into an Times Picayune wrote of the praline edible treat. As an adult, their magic woman: “Ask the ebony woman how never wavered. In New Orleans, the gift to make this delicious brown sugar and of homemade pralines is treasured above pecan candy, and she will nod her head aromatic candles, wine, or chocolates. mysteriously and give you an indefinite The bearer of pralines is instantly answer, for the secret is her own, and propelled to a place of high esteem and she does not intend to reveal it.” Back must fulfill an unspoken, and sometimes then, long before these distinctive treats spoken, expectation of bringing them to were sold in candy stores, the vendeuse every gathering from that day forward. In de pralines could be found perched
IT WAS BLACK WOMEN, SOME OF WHOM MADE PRALINES IN THE KITCHENS OF THOSE WHO ENSLAVED THEM, THAT CREATED THE ICONIC NEW ORLEANS VERSION OF THE PRALINE CANDY.
New Orleans, pralines have always been a big deal. As the story goes, early in the eighteenth century, French colonizers (namely the Ursuline nuns) first introduced the praline candy to the Crescent City. The delicacy’s namesake, a French duke called César, duc de Choiseul comte du Plessis-Praslin, suffered from a stomach ailment, and his chef created the sugared almond praline to aid in his digestive discomfort. The version of New Orleans pralines we enjoy today—of the pecan variety— came from the city’s Black women, who took Praslin’s chef’s medicinal sweet and adapted it to Louisiana, making use of the abundant, regional nut, and adding milk or cream to thicken the sugary mixture. It was Black women, some of whom made pralines in the kitchens of those who enslaved them, that created the iconic New Orleans version of the praline candy. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Black women were some of the first women entrepreneurs in the Crescent City. This was during a time when women seldom worked outside of the home and had few to no rights. New Orleans had a large population of Black people, both enslaved and free. Both groups worked in various professions including street vendors making a living selling calas (fried powdered rice),
in a designated locale with her goods in a basket or spread out on a table. Sometimes she roamed the French Quarter in search of customers. She made pink and coconut pralines, as well as the creamy pecan version that is popular today. As is written in an article titled “Cooking in the South” from the 1895 edition of Current Literature: “The plarine [sic] seller is from New Orleans, and hers is a distinctive and picturesque individuality.” With the money earned from selling their goods, some of these entrepreneur women were even able to purchase their freedom or that of their loved ones. For these women, pralines were so much more than a sweet treat—they represented freedom and independence. As their popularity grew though, the commercialization of pralines would later lead to a quiet dissolution of the praline ladies. A 1918 article in The International Confectioner claims: “A New Orleans firm seeing the wonderful possibilities of this old Louisiana mammy confection began to manufacture them according to the best of the old recipes, none of which were ever reduced to writing but had been carried in the heads of these old negroes and just made right.” The resulting upswing of praline sales in candy shops included the rise of the offensive mammy figure—a caricature
Illustrations by Kameko Madere, from Praline Lady by Kristie Myvett © 2020, used by permission of the publisher, Pelican Publishing an imprint of Arcadia Publishing. // D E C 2 0
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