What's The Flavor Difference Between Praline And Butter Pecan?

You're at the ice cream counter hemming and hawing, trying to decide which scoop you want atop your waffle cone. Nutty, buttery pecans are one of your favorite mix-ins, but how do you choose between a scoop of praline ice cream or a scoop of butter pecan? Other anxious patrons standing behind you in line might want to shout, "There's no difference, just pick one!" But they would be wrong.

Both praline and butter pecan have a creamy, vanilla ice cream base and both include almost identical ingredients like pecans, butter, and brown sugar, but if you were to do a taste test of both flavors at the same time, you'd easily be able to discern the difference. As is true with many other recipes, two dishes of ice cream containing the same ingredients can be quite dissimilar simply because of how those ingredients were combined.

The creator of the praline is generally ascribed to a chef in the 17th century called Clement Lassagne, who was officer of the table or chef de bouche to Marechal du Plessis, duke of Choiseul-Praslin. Lassagne devised a sugar-coated almond candy so delicious, it was said it even "contributed to certain diplomatic triumphs." When the French settled in Louisiana, they brought the praline, but substituted pecans for almonds as they were more readily available.

Pralines are almost fudgy in texture, a mixture of brown sugar, caster sugar, whipping cream, butter, and vanilla extract. The caramel is cooked until it reaches a soft ball stage or 240 degrees Fahrenheit, removed from the heat, and pecans are stirred in right before dolloping onto a prepared cookie sheet by the spoonful and left to cool. Praline ice cream is a vanilla ice cream base with chunks of this praline candy mixed in.

Unlike praline, the origin of butter pecan ice cream is a bit more hazy. While no one seems to know exactly how it came about, the most oft-recited version attributes butter pecan's creation to events said to occur during the Jim Crow era in the Southern United States. In Maya Angelou's memoir "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," she describes how Black people in her hometown of Stamps, Arkansas, used to talk about being denied vanilla ice cream all year long, the only exception being the 4th of July. Butter pecan was a flavor that is said to have come about as a result.

Like praline ice cream, butter pecan begins with a vanilla base, but that's where the similarity ends. Chopped pecans are tossed in a skillet with a tablespoon of butter and toasted for several minutes. After cooling, the buttered pecans are mixed into the vanilla ice cream base.

Though the origins of both ice cream flavors are different, the ingredients are still the same, so it would make sense to assume they taste the same. But the truth is they're quite different in both texture and flavor.

Butter pecan, as the name implies, tastes buttery, a flavor brought on by both the butter the pecans are toasted in, as well as the nuts themselves, which are known to have high fat content and slightly sweet, buttery flavor. Overall, butter pecan ice cream is smooth and creamy with crunchy, butter pecan pieces. On the other hand praline ice cream, which seems so very similar, has a distinct, rich caramel flavor running through it, with fudgy, granular chunks of praline candy strewn throughout the luscious vanilla ice cream base. Next time you're at the ice cream parlor and can't decide between butter pecan and praline, it might be best to simply settle for a scoop of each.