How do I alias the bold weight of a font family to the bold weight of another font family?

Adding binding="strong" to your first edit line like so:

<edit name="family" mode="assign" binding="strong"><string>Essential PragmataPro</string></edit>

should do the trick. It also seems that your second edit line:

<edit name="embolden" mode="assign"><bool>false</bool></edit>

isn't needed.