St. Joseph altars – a New Orleans tradition

By Christine Bordelon
Clarion Herald

A second-generation New Orleanian of Sicilian heritage, Sandra Scalise Juneau fondly remembers standing alongside her grandmother Angelina Caronna Accardo as she created decorative cookies and breads for St. Joseph altars. It was a tradition her grandmother brought here from Poggioreale, Sicily.

Almost 70 years later, Juneau has compiled these family recipes, photos and traditions into the book “Celebrating with St. Joseph Altars, The History, Recipes and Symbols of a New Orleans Tradition,” published by LSU Press.

“I think my objective in this book is three-fold: It’s for people who have never encountered a St. Joseph altar, to have an understanding; for anyone who has experienced it, it’s a remembrance; and for anyone planning a St. Joseph altar, it has all the directions for how you would proceed. I think it will reach people on different levels. That is my hope.”

Traces miracles, recipes
“I’ve probably been writing this my whole life,” Juneau said. “They are old recipes that have been reconditioned for today’s use and times.”

The book contains 60 traditional St. Joseph recipes and 40 photographs culled from Juneau’s collection of more than 2,000. There are vintage photos of her grandmother’s altars; of Archbishop Philip Hannan, Msgr. Ignatius Roppolo, Juneau, her mother and Joe Maselli at the 1984 World’s Fair St. Joseph altar in the Italian Village; of altars at Catholic churches in Lacombe; and of Juneau being photographed by her neighbor and friend – professional photographer Anthony Leone – making the cookies and cakes.

To educate about what’s included on an altar, Juneau divided the book into helpful chapters.

“When you go to a St. Joseph altar, there is so much to take in it’s overwhelming,” she said. “What I have done is take each element of St. Joseph altars that I know about and isolate it to give its religious symbolism and history.”

This is not Juneau’s first foray into writing. She’s written the column “Bonne Bouchee” (good little mouthfuls) about Louisiana food culture and traditions since the 1960s. But it is her first book.

“I’ve always loved food,” she said. “I’ve always been surrounded by food. Everyone in my family was in the grocery business. It was just a natural love for me.”

She said attendance at a cookbook symposium in January 2019 at a Jefferson Parish library put her in contact with LSU Press’ Cynthia Lejeune Nobles, editor of LSU’s cookbook series “The Southern Table,” and a two-year partnership began.
 

She received an email on St. Joseph Day in 2019 that LSU Press would publish her book.

“You could have knocked my socks off,” Juneau said. “St. Joseph guided us through this whole process.”

Archbishop Aymond Gregory Aymond wrote the foreword.

Saving a tradition
Juneau said her grandmother came to New Orleans in 1902 at the age of 16 from Poggioreale, Sicily, accompanied by her father. Her mother and four sisters came later when a family restaurant in New Orleans was established.

Their family’s first altar was above their grocery store at Clio and Liberty streets.

“When I was growing up in the early 1940s, the St. Joseph altar was in her home above the grocery,” Juneau said. “It was magnificent.”

After WWII, around 1946, as was typical of many home altars, the Caronna altar moved to larger quarters – the Convent of the Good Shepherd on Bienville Street.

“She continued this altar until the end of her life, around 1967,” Juneau said, adding that Angelina also started the St. Lucy Society at St. John the Baptist Church in New Orleans. When the convent moved across the Mississippi River to Bridge City, her sister Rosie continued the tradition there.

“The thing about these altars that people don’t understand – once that promise is made to give a St. Joseph altar, it is continued for generations in the same family,” Juneau said. “It is a sacred promise. This has been extraordinary for me to witness through the years.”

So they wouldn’t be lost, Juneau began collecting the recipes she watched her relatives make but didn’t write down. She reduced the huge portions needed for St. Joseph altars to smaller ones for home use.

The importance of this task became evident after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 devastated the homes of many of her family and friends in Lakeview and other areas of New Orleans.

“So many people would call me and ask, ‘Sandra, so you have a recipe for such and such? We lost all our recipes.’”

Food is the great connector, she said, and New Orleanians were looking for their comfort foods after Katrina.

“There’s the continuity of the tradition to their ancestral land,” she said. “(Our) people were displaced (from Sicily and by Katrina). They picked up and left their centuries-old traditions, came to this new land with a new language and replanted their families.”

She believes the fava bean – St. Joseph altar’s symbol of hope because it sustained Sicilians during a famine – is a metaphor for Italian resilience, replanting and flourishing locally.

Continues to work on altars
While Juneau has never hosted a home altar, she’s shared her talents at many local ones, including her parish, St. Anselm in Madisonville, using the precious tools inherited from Angelina to intricately carve the decorative cuccidati cakes. She has visited Poggioreale to bake with l’Associazione Pro Loco members in Sicily, who continue this bread artistry using their grandmothers’ tools.

“Every year, I would just go wherever I felt I could be of help,” Juneau said. “When my grandmother died and I picked up her little tools and started working, it was like her hand was still guiding me. It’s the most extraordinary connection. I am very fortunate to be using her tools.”

She’s taught this uniquely Sicilian tradition to future generations and built altars at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, Xavier University of Louisiana, the 1984 World’s Fair Italian Village and even set up an altar at the Hallmark Card Company in New York in 1969.

Juneau thinks the tradition is worth saving because it brings people of all backgrounds together.

“Anyone who has ever had a St. Joseph Altar will tell you the most extraordinary things happen,” she said. “What I have witnessed through the years is the amazing way St. Joseph brings people together – a sense of camaraderie that is just sacred.

“That is the beauty of the St. Joseph Altar tradition. It’s not about the food, which is wonderful and has a lot of symbolism and history, but St. Joseph brings people together in the most amazing way. I am constantly astounded by it. That, to me, is the whole miracle behind the St. Joseph altar tradition.”

The book is available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon and other places.

cbordelon@clarionherald.org.