Tante Joséphine Calas grew up in New Orleans where calas were not a novelty — they were Sunday morning food. Creole women, many of them formerly enslaved, sold these fried rice fritters in the streets of the French Quarter on Sunday mornings, calling out to churchgoers on their way home from mass. The cala was a vehicle for economic independence and a piece of West African culinary tradition carried forward through generations of Black Creole women. Joséphine learned to make them from her grandmother, who learned from hers.

Her work centers on New Orleans Creole sweet tradition — calas made with leftover cooked rice, eggs, and sugar and fried to order, pain perdu the Creole version of French toast made with stale French bread and served with cane syrup, and pralines made the Creole way with brown sugar and cream poured onto parchment to set. Joséphine understands that New Orleans Creole food carries the specific history of a culture shaped by French colonialism, the African diaspora, and the particular ingenuity of people who created something lasting and beautiful under brutal conditions.

In Universo da Doçura, Tante Joséphine represents a pastry tradition that is historically specific, culturally significant, and deeply tied to the identity of Black Creole women in New Orleans. Her calas are always made with day-old rice. Her kitchen always smells of frying dough and cane syrup.