Eat this Word: Zeppole

by jbfauthor on February 10, 2010

WHAT? Saintly snack. March 19, the day of San Giuseppe, is the day tradition binds Neapolitans to eat zeppole. (The plural takes an "e.") Not that it takes much encouragement. Although New Yorkers associate the deep-fried dough dusted with powdered sugar with street fairs in Little Italy, the snack dates at least to the early 19th century, and most likely several hundred years before that. It was the Neapolitan pastry chef Pintauro who first fried his zeppole on the sidewalk (outside his shop), and thus created what one commentator, Don Giulio Genonino, in 1834 called the "zeppole de pasticcere a delluvio" (flood of zeppole) that characterizes the streets in Naples on the Day of St. Joseph. WHERE? Anthony Pino's Beard House dinner WHEN? February 19, 2010

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