A Taste of the South: Notes from a Trip to Louisiana
Wherein we find out that we don’t love pralines
The New Orleans School of Cooking is just across the street from Johnny’s Po-Boys, so after lunch at Johnny’s we headed there to get some pralines. While the New Orleans School of Cooking is an actual school that offers demonstration and hands-on cooking classes, our mule-carriage tour guide had pointed it out to us as a place where to get pralines, another New Orleans specialty.
Pralines are sweet confections of nuts in a caramelized sugar base. In France, these are rather hard, closer to brittle and typically based on almonds. In America, pralines are made with a combination of sugar, butter and cream, milk or half and half and typically pecan based. They are closer to a nutty fudge than a candy.
The New Orleans School of Cooking makes their pralines on site, and they generously offer you samples. They have both plain and a chocolate kind. I preferred the plain but they were too sweet for my taste. I also didn’t really like how soft they were. We bought a couple, but I never actually felt tempted to eat them. Still, if you like fudge and pecans, you’ll probably like them.
New Orleans School of Cooking
524 St. Louis Street
New Orleans, LA
Daily 9am - 5pm
New Orleans Food Tour
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