Saturday 25 April 2009

Pralines

When you look at dictionary.com for the pronunciation of praline, it says "prah-leen" first. Since I grew up in Louisiana, and have eaten my fair share of the sugary confection, I've always known the correct way to say it! Or at least I thought I did.

I can recall many times in Texas my friends saying, "pray-leen" or "pe-CAN", and we all laughed in jest at the differences in pronunciation.

My friend Luisa is having a Mardi Gras Themed 40th next weekend and I offered to help with the food. I'm having fun sourcing things from my good friends at Lupe Pintos Deli and thinking about recipes to prepare. Of course one of the first things I thought of was "prah-leens". It's easy to find sugar, butter, cream and pecans (yes, Costco has huge bags of them!). So I made a batch last weekend and it came up in conversation at a dinner party Saturday night.

You can see where this is going!

Another good friend of mine, loves her opinion. She's never afraid to speak her mind. And I love that about her. Except when she tried to correct me on the pronunciation of pralines. People, you'd have thought they were my life blood because I was telling her all about it! I'm sure the wine had a little to do with it.

I did check myself on Dictionary.com Sunday morning. Just to be sure. And I looked on Wikipedia about the origin of the delicious said candy. They may have come from France with chocolate and almonds in them, but when they made it to Louisiana, they became what we know as PRALINEs, or PRAHLEENs.

Since moving to Scotland, we have learned the British pronunciation for many English words we have been using all of our lives. And since I live in Great Britain, I try to use those pronunciations while here. You know, tomato, tomaaato, either, eIther, and so on. When in Rome....

But when we are going to a Mardi Gras party, eating Louisiana pralines, I'm gonna call them by their name. So I'm just letting the good folks in Louisiana know that I'm spreading the word about our good friend the PRAHLEEN.

Just wait until they try the GUMBO!