June 24, 2021 was National Pralines Day and I was thrilled to share Titine’s story on social media.
“He who has not tasted Titine’s pralines has something yet to learn of the joys of the palate. As everybody knows, the praline is essentially a New Orleans product, and there is not an Inhabitant of that city who does not understand that grated cocoanut mixed with sugar and cooked in a certain way, will turn out pralines. Ah yes! But there are pralines and pralines!
And Titine’s secret of its absolute perfection has never been revealed. For thirty years, weather permitting, this old mulatress has been sitting in one place on the sidewalk, in the busiest section of the Town. Her little low table is the same; the tray, now despoiled of its paint, has never been replaced by a newer one, neither has she altered the pattern of her stiffly starched guiné blue dress, nor indeed have her pralines undergone any evolution. They are precisely of the same shape and size as they were years ago, when a buxom young matron, she first took her seat on the banquette and received the title of the Praline Woman.” Metropolitan magazine Company, Volume 23, 1905