You are a sweetheart!

First is the classic, pre-20th century southern treat:

• Pralines were first brought to the American South by French settlers to Louisiana in the 17th and 18th centuries. The American recipe varies slightly from the French due to ingredient availability, and so became an American southern delicacy in their own right.

From Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 766):

"Sugar almonds. Almonds coated with a layer of fine sugar, as for dragees...Sugar almonds play an important role in rites of passage, particularly christenings and weddings, at which they are offered as symbols of good fortune. This custom is strong in France, Greece, Italy, other Mediterranean countries, and as far east as Iran and Afghanistan where they are known as noql...As a New Year offering they are supposed to ensure that the mouths and lives of the recipients will remain sweet for the whole of the coming year. Less sophisticated versions of almond dragees are sometimes made at home by cooking almonds, or other nuts, such as hazel, in sugar syrup and then stirring the mixture till it grains.' The almonds, with some of the sugar clinging to them, are separated and dried. Many 17th- and 18th-century praline recipes are of this type."

• Less fancy among the early 20th century American was the chocolate bar or candy bar because, from Candy: A Century of Panic and Pleasure:

At the start of the 20th century, when undernutrition was a serious problem, especially among poor and working-class people, and when nutrition science was a new field, the high calorie content was promoted as a virtue. Researchers suggested that candy, especially candy with milk and nuts, was a low-cost alternative to normal meals. To get the food energy necessary for a day of labor, candy might cost half as much as eggs. During the 1920s and 1930s, candy bars selling for five cents were often marketed as replacements for lunch.

However, I might note that if your grandmother grew up in the Great Depression, she might enjoy one of the many chocolate bars invented in the USA during the 1920s and 1930s: Snickers, Hershey's, Violet Mints.

​

As a follow up, how did it, or did it change as a consequence of the Great Depression? Which would have struck right in the middle of that time span.

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