---------- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.05

     Title: PRALINES (L.A. TIMES)
Categories: Candies, La_times, American, Ethnic
     Yield: 12 Pralines

---------------------------LARRY LUTTROPP FVKC70A---------------------------

------------------------L.A. TIMES FOOD SECTION 2/95------------------------
 1 1/2 c  Sugar
   1/2 c  Evaporated milk
     1 ts Butter
   1/2 ts Vanilla
     1 c  Freshly grated coconut

    Mix sugar and milk together in heavy saucepan. Cook over medium heat
 until mixture reaches 236 degrees on candy thermometer.
    Remove mixture from heat. Add butter and vanilla. Beat mixture until
 creamy with slight shine, but still thin. Add coconut. Stir well to evenly
 distribute coconut. Drop pralines by spoonfuls onto greased foil or marble
 slab. Let stand to harden. When hardened, pralines can be stored in tins.
    Each praline contains about: 137 calories; 16 mg sodium; 4 mg
 cholesterol; 3 grams fat; 27 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram protein; 0.28 gram
 fiber.
    Source: Excerpted from "The Welcome Table: African-American Heritage
 Cooking" (Simon & Schuster: 1995) by Dr. Jessica B. Harris.
    Presented by: Michelle Huneven, L.A. Times article, "African-American
 Heritage: A Higher Cala", 2/16/95, page H12.
    "This New Orleans confection is another important link in the chain of
 African- American cooking. Throughout the African diaspora in the New
 World, women have worked at preparing sugared confections and selling them
 door to door in public areas of the city. During the period of enslavement,
 the money earned from these sales frequently went to the mistress of the
 house, although on some occasions a portion was given to the woman, who
 might in this manner some day be able to pay for her freedom. After
 Emancipation, the selling of sweets became a time-honored way of making a
 small but honorable living. The legacy of the slave saleswoman still lives
 on in Brazil's baianas de tabuleiro, in the sweets sellers of the
 Caribbean, and in the pralinieres of New Orleans, although there are only a
 perilous few of them left.
    "The term praline is not an African one, although the similarities of
 the New Orleans praline to candies from Curacao, Brazil, Jamaica,
 Guadeloupe and other places where Africans have cooked in the New World
 would startle many a shop owner in the French Quarter. The name harks back
 to France and to the Duc de Praslin, who is said to have had a particular
 fondness for the sugar coated almonds that bear his name. A while back, I
 was speaking to Leah Chase, the doyenne of African-American Creole cooking
 of New Orleans, and was startled to hear her recall that the original
 praline was not the brown-sugar pecan confection that is so familiar today,
 but rather a pink or white coconut patty that is much closer to taste and
 in form to its Caribbean and Brazilian cousins. Here are the white and pink
 versions of this achingly sweet treat."

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