Praline is a family of confections made from nuts and sugar syrup.
   In Europe, the nuts are usually almonds or sometimes hazelnuts. In Louisiana and Texas, pecans are almost always used, and cream is often incorporated into the mixture. Praline candy patties are one of the foods most often associated with New Orleans, but are also popular in other antebellum cities in the Deep South, like Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia, where the similar benne seed wafer is also common.
   As originally invented in France at the Chateau Vaux-le Vicomte by the cook of the 19th century sugar industrialist, Praslin. Pralines were whole almonds individually coated in caramelized sugar, as opposed to dark nougat, where a sheet of caramelized sugar covers many nuts. The powder made by grinding up such sugar-coated nuts is called 'pralin' or 'praliné' in French, and is an ingredient in many cakes and pastries.
   In most other countries the word 'praline' is used to mean this powder, or even a paste, often used to fill chocolates, hence its use by synecdoche in Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium to refer to filled chocolates in general. In the United Kingdom, the term can refer either to praline (the filling for chocolates) or, less commonly, to the original whole-nut pralines.

Origin of the name

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