[skyguy79]

Originally Posted by ncarvalho

I voted for sauce, because of the variety of option one can make (or buy).
Gravy is more of utilizing the juice of the meat to prepare it.

Now, my bedside books have so many options for sauces (and I make most of them from scratch) that all I need it the time (retirement!) to make them all!

Enjoy.. today is a snow day in Fairfax,VA and I am making marrow SAUCE with pepper… perfect on a bed of polenta and a good wine. Care to join?

Aah... polenta. Man, I think it's been more than 45 years since I've had polenta e baccala. My mother used to prepare it and serve it to my father and myself right on the table - no plates!

[skyguy79]

Money is also refered to as "gravy" by some! Some people also think the moon is made of cheese!

So let's have a party by cooking up some pasta, put some ground up money on it, sprinkle shredded moon over it and serve hot with some Italian bread & butter!

[jorick]

Originally Posted by rokinronda

my 100% italian grandmother always made the sunday gravy (tomato) with pork, beef, veal, braccioli, meatballs, and sausauge, etc...........
Do you say gravy or
do call it sauce??


Gravy here!! Lol

gravy-born and raised in n.y that's what we called it!

[CFrance]

I shall ask my next-door neighbor, Italian born and raised in Hoboken NJ. What she says goes, in my book.

[senior citizen]

Nowadays, in 2013, everyone calls pasta sauce "sauce". No doubt about it.

However, those of us who were born in the 1940's or prior....and who have childhood memories of the 1950's.......and perhaps those whose grandmothers came from southern Italy, as mine did, remember the nonna (grandmother) or zia (aunt) calling it "gravy". I'm talking "Little Italy" New York City, circa 1940's, 1950's, etc.
They all arrived in the late 1880's from the mountainous regions of southern Italy.

My dad called it gravy and my mom called it gravy. The next generation began calling it sauce. We still call it sauce, but they called it gravy.

They also called pasta "macaroni" no matter..........

Nowadays we all call it pasta and sauce. No doubt about it.

But, back in the day..........they all called it GRAVY.

Sunday Gravy was with all the meats. We've run over this explanation before......

As someone else wisely states , it doesn't really matter what one calls it.........home made sauce/gravy is delicious. The kind you want to dip your bread right into the pot for..........

I am guilty of renewing this thread when I found another recipe for Sunday Gravy on the Francesco Rinaldi website..........and posted it as an added thought to the original thread............by the way, we were raised in New Jersey, but still, all of the oldtimers (grandparents of friends of mine) back in the 1950's still called it GRAVY.

Today we all call it pasta sauce.

[Portia]

Its sauce we italians know and i still make it the way my mom did..thank god for moms!!!!

[shcisamax]

From: In Italy They Call It Gravy

In Italy They Call It Gravy



It being pasta sauce, and the answer is no, simply because gravy is an English word (sorry).

In Italy there are sugo and salsa. Sugo derives from succo (juices), and refers to pan drippings from the cooking of meats, rich meat-based sauces along the lines of sugo alla Bolognese, or thick vegetable sauces (which often, though not always, go over pasta). A salsa is a semi-liquid-to-liquid raw or cooked sauce that's used as a condiment. It can go over pasta, for example pesto alla genovese, but can also be used to season other dishes. For example, salsa verde is wonderful over boiled meats or potatoes, as is mayonnaise (salsa maionese in many cookbooks). If a sauce is especially delicate, it may be called "salsina."

The passage from sugo/salsa to sauce/gravy must have occurred when immigrant families settled into new neighborhoods in the US, and is, I expect, an Italian-American family/neighborhood tradition more than anything else. Some immigrants translated the Italian for what they put on their pasta as gravy, while others translated it as sauce, and the translations have been passed down through the generations, becoming law in the process. People get amazingly passionate over things like this.

[senior citizen]

Originally Posted by Jim&Fran

Every Sunday morning my alarm clock would would gently wake me, not a ringer or buzzer but rather the sound of sizzle and the aroma of garlic and oil. Without looking I knew a large cast iron fryin pan would be crowded with hand rolled meatballs of different sizes.
Mom always made "extras" which were kept on the stove until I returned from Church.
A huge pot, already simmering with deep scarlet tomato lava, laced with chunks of meaty goodness sat waiting but not quite ready.
Walking back home after Church you could smell that same Sunday morning temptation comming from each house I passed. I was born and raised in the Long Island City (Astoria)
section of NYC. The first thing I did when comming back home was to grab one of those extras on the stove with a fork. I would carefully swipe it along the upper rim on the pot, that's where the Gravey was caked and thick. Oh the joy of simple pleasures. There was always something unique about moms and grandmas Gravey and meatballs, I was sure none were better in the whole world. To this day I try to duplicate everything I saw and learned, to be honest I'm close, really close. I guess the secret to making that wonderful traditional dish is to make plenty at once. I might have a touch of OCD when it comes to cooking. When I make meatballs I always make an even number, not 6 or 8 how about 20 or 30. I found that its easier to come closer due to the fact that a smidge more salt or anything else will not throw off the flavor as much. By the way please keep all those measuring devices in the draw, a tsp of this or a cup of that. You want to cook like Granma than cook like Granma. Put the ingredients in the palm of your hand one at a time, look at it then add. Make meatballs a little irregular, I mean not all the same size. Each one will have its own appeal when you reach into the meat platter with your own fork. By the way, Grandma and Grandpa lived downstairs and yes we made wine every fall in the cellar.
Sunday's were always filled with good food, fun and family visits.
Oh any by the way, we had macaroni not pasta with the Gravey.
Maybe another time I'll tell you about what else was in that large pot with the wooden spoon keeping the lid ajar all morning and afternoon. Yep, you can't get this stuff in a jar.
Eat well.
Jim.

This couple is spot on correct. It was Sunday Gravy with the meats in it.
And it was macaroni not pasta.

Nowadays WE ALL CALL IT SAUCE AND PASTA. NO DOUBT ABOUT IT.

But back in our childhoods, it was "gravy" and "macaroni".

Perhaps the faction that understands that the Sunday GRAVY had meats in it made the difference compared to plain old marinara sauce which was tomatoes and garlic, basil, oregano, etc. Marinara sauce had no meat in it. AMEN.

P.S. TO THE "AMEN" I myself call it pasta sauce NOWADAYS but I still remember back when they all called it GRAVY.

[skyguy79]

With this debate being reborn and debated over and over, again and again, I thought it was time to repost my comments I made nearly a year ago on this thread. These have always been my thoughts, still are and will always be. There's just too much overwhelming evidence for me not to.

Originally Posted by skyguy79

I'm 100% Italian with all grandparents having come here from Italy. As I read through the posts in this thread, I found statements that I found amusing; statements that indicate what they think justifying the usage of the term they think is correct. The most glaring and humorous was one that read something like... It's gravy because it's on the label of a jar. I won't say what I think of that reasoning. I've even read in an internet article where a chef explained the difference by stating that if the pasta is wet and not thoroughly drained, it's called sauce because the gravy was diluted. But if it's put on a drained bed of spaghetti, pasta or whatever you wanna call it, it's gravy. Another bright explanation!

Now is there really a correct term? Well basically you can call it whatever you want. Right or wrong, nobody's gonna stop you from using the term and neither is really 100% correct. The real issue is what is really the more appropriate term? One simple test is to do a Google search on the exact terms and see just how many hits you get on each. I did just that and here are the results:

• "Spaghetti Gravy: 22,700 hits
• "Spaghetti Sauce: 4,550,000 hits

With Sauce having 200 times more hits than Gravy, I think there is a clear winner and that it's by far the more "appropriate" term to use if not the "proper" term. Supporting that is the fact that if you check the definition of both terms, you'll find out that gravy is a form of sauce while there is no mention of sauce being a form of gravy.

I have never ever heard of using the name gravy for topping spaghetti or pasta by any member of my now departed past generations. In fact I don't remember when I even heard it used for spaghetti or pasta for the first time, but it wasn't in my youth. Gravy was as others have indicated a sauce to use on meats, poultry, stuffing, mashed potatoes etc., but not for topping spaghetti or pasta. Matter of fact my familia frequently used the Italian term of Sugo (pronounced Zugou) for spaghetti sauce which technically covers both gravy and sauce as well as juice and essence. We even called the end cuts of the Italian bread "Cula" (pronounced Gulah or Goolou) meaning "A**" in Italian. The Cula was my favorite, but I'm not gonna tell you what I did with it!

[jblum315]

oh, please, aren't we done with this? BORING!!

[senior citizen]

Originally Posted by skyguy79

With this debate being reborn and debated over and over, again and again, I thought it was time to repost my comments I made nearly a year ago on this thread. These have always been my thoughts, still are and will always be. There's just too much overwhelming evidence for me not to.

Love you Skyguy and all your posts. In due respect, I "hear you" and yes we all call it sauce today......so any poll conducted nowadays would turn out to be "sauce wins".

I'm referring to back in the 1940's and 1950's LITTLE ITALY NEW YORK CITY where my paternal grandparents came in 1890 from a little mountain village in southern Italy.

I understand the translation from sugo.

But I also distinctly remember my aunts, my grandmother, all the cousins and relatives.......plus my own dad and mom calling it "gravy". This was way before any bottled or jarred sauce appeared on the market. In those days it was made from scratch. The Sunday Gravy had meat in it.
Many types of meat.

I did my own survey once and "gravy" was typical of immigrants to New York City's Little Italy whose children then moved to northern New Jersey, etc. It might be different for those who settled in Chicago or elsewhere.

Can we argue with GOODFELLAS???????????? See the Sunday gravy,etc?
Goodfellas Foods

Can we argue with the notorious SOPRANOS?
Soprano's Uncle Junior's Sunday "Gravy" | The Gail Spot
Soprano’s Uncle Junior’s Sunday “Gravy”
It will make everyone happy to see “sauce” used interchangeably.

http://pegasuslegend-whatscookin.blo...-or-gravy.html

Please scroll down on the above hyperlink. It's definitely a regional expression as to whether one calls it sauce or they call it gravy.
This is an interesting article............