Lindsay Marie Morris

March 19 marks St. Joseph's Day, also known as the Feast of Saint Joseph, who is revered as the father of Jesus and the patron saint of Sicily. Legend states that Saint Joseph brought Sicily relief from famine during the Middle Ages. Faced with severe drought, the people prayed to the island's patron saint to deliver rain, promising to prepare a feast in gratitude. Rain came, the population was saved, and the people celebrated with a banquet in Joseph's name. And so began the annual tradition of preparing St. Joseph's Day altars filled with food, ranging from humble fava beans to festively decorated cuccidati cookies.

The custom was carried with Sicilian immigrants to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly among those who settled in Louisiana. Today, St. Joseph's Day is a major holiday, especially in New Orleans, where lavishly decorated altars appear at churches, schools, and even atop parade floats. And food is distributed to charity. 

To learn more about the history and evolution of the St. Joseph altar tradition, I reached out to native New Orleanian and historian Laura Guccione, who has written a forthcoming book on the topic and is actively involved in preserving and promoting the tradition through lectures, events, and community engagement.

How did the tradition of Saint Joseph's Day altars originate in Sicily?

The main story is that there was a famine and that the people of Sicily prayed to St. Joseph. And then all of a sudden, the fava bean started growing, and they ate the fava bean, which originally was fodder for animals. It saved them, and they decided to have a feast to celebrate that the famine was over. 

How was the tradition brought to New Orleans?

After the Civil War, people from Louisiana were trying to replace the enslaved to work on the sugarcane plantations. Sicily has a tradition of growing, but it was amid famine. After the unification of Italy, Sicily was poorer than they were before. So it was perfect timing for them to come.

A small Sicilian population was already in New Orleans before the Civil War. It's where the lemon trade started; from there, it grew.

So there are already these connections, and they started bringing people, and then the population grew and grew.

A lot of them were migrant workers. They settled all over Louisiana. It was mostly men. Eventually, some of them settled and stayed, and then they would have their wives come over and have children.

Early on, other saints' days were celebrated here, but those kind of fizzled out. After the two world wars, St. Joseph's Day really took off because people were building altars so their sons would come home safe and sound.

How has the celebration evolved?

You see a lot more of the altars and in different places. After Katrina, there were a lot of people moving here, and it really put people in a panic about what was going to happen and whether we would lose certain cultural traditions and rituals. But now it seems like there are a lot more of them, and it's not always Sicilians building them, erecting the altars. 

While Sicilians celebrate St. Joseph's Day as the feast day of the saint, the Black Masking Indians celebrate St. Joseph's Day as mid-Lent. Traditionally, the Black Masking Indians wore costumes on Mardi Gras Day and St. Joseph's Day, but around the 1980s, Super Sunday became a thing on the Sunday closest to St. Joseph's Day.

How can somebody who isn't in New Orleans set up their own altar and celebrate?

Traditionally, it is three layers. What I do is take some wine boxes, cover them with tablecloths, and then build it up. At the very top, there's a statue of St. Joseph, usually surrounded by St. Joseph lilies, which bloom closest to his feast day. You can just decorate with any kind of fruit, vegetables, or cookies and just go to town with that.

What is your hope people will take away from this celebration?

Just how important it is to continue traditions. And it's all about pride in your heritage along with the Sicilian traditions that have survived. 

Photo by Laura Guccione

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New Orleans is renowned for its cuisine. But when it comes to several of its most iconic dishes, some credit should go to the area's Sicilian transplants, says Louisiana historian Laura Guccione. 

"If you think about something like shrimp creole with tomatoes in it, a lot of people have said that it definitely has a Sicilian influence," says Laura. "And if you go to a restaurant here, a lot of places have stuffed artichokes on the menu. That's definitely directly from Sicily."

Curious about the Sicilian origins of Louisiana's plants and foods, the Delgado Culinary School graduate pursued a master's in urban studies at the University of New Orleans. Her graduate thesis evolved into two New Orleans history book manuscripts, one on St. Joseph's Day and the other on Sicilians and Creole Cuisine, both currently under peer review by LSU Press. 

I caught up with Laura to learn more about how Sicilians colored New Orleans's rich history. She shared some of the more surprising food contributions and how Sicilian corner stores promoted what's become known as New Orleans cuisine.

What is your background?

I'm a native New Orleanian but grew up in the suburbs. My father's a hundred percent Sicilian. His story is interesting because his father was born in Louisiana, but in Lettsworth, Louisiana, which is north of Baton Rouge and sugar cane country. His grandfather did not like it here, so they went back to Sicily. So, my grandfather was an American citizen. He was born here but was raised in Sicily. He came back as a teenager at 17 and then lived in New Orleans. I still have direct cousins in Sicily because his brother stayed in Sicily.

My mother's family is from the very beginning of New Orleans. They're a Creole family, also Scots-Irish. 

I grew up here, worked in the service industry for about 30 years, tending bar, and then decided to go back to school after Hurricane Katrina. 

I went to culinary school, but I soon realized that as much as I loved restaurants, food, and cooking, I was really more interested in history. So, a few years later, I went back to get my master's degree from the University of New Orleans.

How did the challenges Sicilian immigrants faced influence their culinary contributions?

Sicilians assimilated quicker than most places, so I think it's harder to see what they've done. They immediately spread all over the city, including on the West Bank, uptown, downtown, and outside of New Orleans, because many of them came to work the sugarcane fields. 

They were basically migrant workers. They would come here, spend time in Louisiana, then go to Chicago and go up to where other things were being harvested. 

They went back and forth, which contributed to agriculture. Many Sicilians had small farms outside of New Orleans, almost within the city limits. 

What happened with the Sicilians is that they contributed a lot to Creole cuisine. It's not as obvious as an actual dish, with the exception of the muffuletta and a few other things that are obviously Sicilian.

They were changing cuisine here because what they were growing was what they were familiar with. They were coming back and forth so they could bring seeds and plants. They were going into the field of producing, growing, producing, and distributing fruits, vegetables, and even oysters and fish. 

In the history of recipes, you can see that as more and more Sicilians come here, you see a change in what's being used. For example, everybody talks about the trinity [onions, bell peppers, and celery]. Paul Prudhomme was the first one to start using that. I talked to his sous chef recently, and he said Paul only really cooked with celery once he got here. Where does celery come from? It comes from Sicily.

A lot of old gumbo recipes barely have anything in them. Through the years, you see more onions; you see more celery and peppers. Because what do they eat in Sicily more than anything? Peppers, onions, celery, and tomatoes.

What's a surprising Sicilian contribution to New Orleans cuisine?

If you look at the history of the poor boy, it was created by the Martin Brothers. But they went to their Sicilian baker neighbor to have the bread made. 

Baguettes from France are long and skinny with pointy ends. They went to their neighbor and said, "We need to change this because we want to make these sandwiches, but we don't want to lose that end. We want something rounder and wider."

So Sicilians and the Martin Brothers created this loaf of bread that is now synonymous with the city.  And what do people come here for? Poor boys.

Another contribution is the muffuletta. Can you describe its creation?

No one will probably be able to prove how it really started. There's Central Grocery and a place a couple of doors down called Progress. They both said that they created the muffuletta. Progress is gone, so it's pretty much accepted that it was created at Central Grocery. 

The story goes that Central Grocery sold the bread, which, if you go to Sicily, the muffuletta is just a round bread. Sometimes, people would serve it hot with olive oil and fennel seeds on it, but it's just bread. It's not a sandwich in Sicily.

Central Grocery had the bread and all the pieces; they would sell the salami, cheese, and olives in the big barrels and bundle up stuff for the men to go to work. 

One day, they said, "Why don't we just put it all together and make this easier?"

That's an example of a Sicilian-owned grocery store having an impact. What is the history of these stores?

At one point, probably in the early 1900s, maybe even heading into the mid-1900s, most of the grocery stores were owned by Sicilians or their children. They tended to be on a corner, and you didn't have a major grocery store, so that's where you probably got everything. You probably knew the people. And then there are lots of stories where the Sicilian families would let people buy on credit. So, there was definitely dependence upon the neighborhood, and the neighborhood depended on the grocers, who sold everything from flour to clothes.

Mandina's Restaurant and Napoleon House both started off as grocery stores. Most of these places started off as grocery stores, became bars, and then became restaurants. 

The story with Napoleon House is that the owner at the time said, "We'll make some sandwiches." And then it just evolved from there. Now, it's probably one of the most famous restaurants in the world.

What is your goal in writing about Sicilian-New Orleans cuisine and culture?

I really just want to shine a light on what I feel is a somewhat neglected history. I want something that could be used as a reference later. It's like all this work I'm doing is not just for me but for posterity. 

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