Cuccìa is a traditional, primarily Sicilian dish containing boiled wheat berries and sugar, which is eaten on Saint Lucy's feast day (December 13), the patron saint of Siracusa (Syracuse). The dish is consumed in Sicily and in isolated pockets of Southern Italy, as well as their communities abroad to commemorate the relief from a food shortage in Sicily and the unexpected arrival of a cargo of wheat which tradition says arrived in the port of Palermo on Saint Lucy's Feast, in 1646. According to custom, bread should not be eaten on December 13; the notion is that cuccìa should be the only source of wheat, and the primary source of nourishment for the day.
Cuccìa is prepared differently from family to family and in different regions. Some make cuccìa as soup, others as a pudding; and, in Kansas City, Missouri among Sicilian-Americans, cuccìa is prepared as a hot-cereal, but most traditional preparations add sugar, butter and milk. Ceci beans (chickpeas), known to Americans as garbanzo beans are also associated with the eating of cuccìa; but, more rarely, as are almonds and ricotta. Within the Italian context the term "cuccìa" itself is uniquely Sicilian and unrelated to similarly spelled Italian words hinting at foreign origins. Cuccìa may owe its origins to Sicily's Byzantine period (535-965 AD) since a variant of cuccìa, koliva, is also prepared in the Balkans; but, the most likely candidate for its origin may be its most similar counterpart, kutia, (pronounced kùtcha) an identical dish served throughout the Ukraine, Russia, and Poland. As in Sicily, this is eaten only during the Christmas season and, like the Sicilian dish, its basic preparation (boiled weat and honey instead of sugar) remains strikingly similar. Another theory gives Arabic origins to the word cuccìa since the Arabic word of kiskiya references, both, grain and the earthenware that held the grain, and Sicily was dominated by Arabic peoples that gave rise to many foods iconic to Sicilian cuisine.
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