Let's Resume This Food Fight
 

This is about Sunday Sauce. (Disclaimer: I'm not Italian, nor were any Italians harmed in the making of this post.)

Bon Appetit is saying that if you make Sunday Sauce without meat, it is called sauce. If it has meat, it's called gravy. What say you? I thought it was more of an Italian origin issue, as in what part of Italy your ancestors were from.

Sunday Sauce Common Mistakes - Bon App

My spaghetti SAUCE has meat in it. My gravy has meat (kind of, anyway) in it. Until I moved here and read TOTV, I had never heard spaghetti sauce being called gravy and I've lived in New Jersey and New York and have known several Italians on both coasts. So, it's sauce to me.

My sauce is referred to as Italian gravy. We eat it with pasta andwith anything else that uses spaghetti sauce.

Agreed!

Next...?

I love the sauce/gravy debate. Read the comments in the Bon Appetit article. Someone gives a link to a pictorial about how some guy makes sauce/gravy for his family. it's a fun blog entry.

I never went to culinary school, but I thought if it was tomato, cream or egg based, it was a sauce. If it came from the pan drippings of dead cow, dead pig, dead turkey it was a gravy. Brad Pitt would agree, Bruce Willis offered no opinion

My grandmother called it gravy and her daughter, my mom called it sauce. My guess is that sauce is what it was called on TV by modern woman in the 50's. My mom wouldn't be old fashion. Than their was a renaissance of embracing your Italian heritage [The Godfather and Goodfellows] and I swear I heard people my own age, who never had an Italian accent or use their hands to talk all that much make the ethnic change to their roots. This included calling sauce, gravy.

When showing Michael Corleone how to make it, Clemenza called it sauce

That's an interesting theory, tomwed.

I always called it sauce, but when I made friends with someone from a large Italian family in NJ, and she called it gravy, I was intrigued. Somehow it sounds more... I don't know, authentic, old-world, or something. I love the sound and the imagery of "gravy."

Never heard it called gravy, but that isn't surprising. There weren't many Italians where I lived. I am still trying to figure out the different kinds of pasta. Macaroni was always elbows and used for mac and cheese and spaghetti sauce went over spaghetti, regular or skinny. The rigaphooey and the calzonarinas and the noodleregina are all confusing as heck.


But I love the taste of Italian food, but you can't get me to eat octopuses.

Maybe if you tried eating them one at a time.....:1rotfl:

I made the mistake of asking for extra sauce for my noodles at Angelo's Restaurant on Mulberry St. in Little Italy in Manhattan about 25 years ago. Oh boy did I ever get a lesson from the waitress, then the cook, then the owner. It's a no sauce it's GRAVY. As if it mattered to me. The meal was outstanding. They were really nice people but I never went back I didn't want them to upset them over something dumb I said. I'm just happy there were no little fingers or toes sticking out of....I better shut up. Omerta=the code of silence. By the time you pay the toll on the N.J. Turnpike then the Lincoln Tunnel Toll then $30.00 to park then the meal you think Sauce or Gravy is important? It sure was to them. Getting out of that mass of humanity and back to N.J. felt like I hit the lottery. We drive into Manhattan to Rockefeller Center to see the Christmas Tree every year & get outta dodge as fast as possible. I'm really gonna miss N.Y. & N.J.....NOT.

Hello Ms. Gracie, hope your feeling much better with your eye. I know I'm gonna be facing the same thing shortly. Italian's are fine people to be around but I tend to come away black & blue because they bump you and hit lightly to make their point when speaking. It's all good. Fine people.

I'm pretty sure they called it gravy on Soprano's.

Sauce/gravy same thing
 

I think it's a family thing, like some kids say Mama and some say Mommy. In the mostly Italian community where I lived people said sauce or gravy, meaning exactly the same thing -- tomatoes flavored with meat or even with large chunks of meat cooked in it. At an Italian meal, the pasta dish came first, then the main dish, which was sometimes the large pieces of meat that had been cooked in the sauce/gravy