New Orleans Pralines: Plantation Sugar, Louisiana Pecans, and the Marketing of Southern Nostalgia

"New Orleans Pralines: Plantation Sugar, Louisiana Pecans, and the Marketing of Southern Nostalgia follows the development of the praline, from its origins following the Civil War through its present-day status as an iconic symbol of New Orleans. Anthony Stanonis argues that pralines arrived in New Orleans with enslaved persons fleeing Louisiana plantations during the Civil War. Black women emerging from slavery were able to use pralines as an entrepreneurial commodity, to the point that white New Orleans authors soon coopted the image of the praline seller to present her as a mammy. This put a Louisiana twist on the southern mammy image while also inventing a noble, aristocratic history for the praline.