Europe
As originally inspired in France at the Château of Vaux-le-Vicomte by the cook of the 17th-century sugar industrialist Marshal du Plessis-Praslin (1598–1675), early pralines were whole almonds individually coated in caramelized sugar, as opposed to dark nougat, where a sheet of caramelized sugar covers many nuts. Although the New World had been discovered and settled by this time, pecans and chocolate-producing cocoa (both native to the New World) were originally not ingredients in European pralines. The European chefs used local, easily available and relatively cheap ingredients: nuts such as almonds and hazelnuts.
The powder made by grinding up such sugar-coated nuts is called pralin, and is an ingredient in many cakes, pastries, and ice creams. When this powder is mixed with chocolate, it becomes praliné in French, which gave birth to what is known in French as praline belge, Belgian chocolates. The word praliné is used colloquially in France and Switzerland to refer to these, known simply as "chocolates" in English, i.e. various centres coated with chocolate. In Europe, the word praline is used to mean either this powder or the paste made from it, 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.
In Europe, the nuts are usually almonds or sometimes hazelnuts.
Read more about this topic: Praline
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