[senior citizen]

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[senior citizen]

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[senior citizen]

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[DianeM]

Sorry but I disagree completely on the sauce / gravy debate. My best friends - Luigi and Alfonso (brothers) have parents - Salvatore and Emma that came here in the 60's. They have and make and serve 'sauce ' with macaroni what ever style it is. So for me .... it's sauce if it's red and gravy is the brown stuff for pot roast. However - call it what you will - it's all damned fine good eats.

[senior citizen]

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[msendo]

My grandmother came from Naples, Italy, around 1910. We all lived in Queens, NY, also. For years we had gravy on our macaroni. Today, somehow, my kids and I now put sauce on our pasta. Go figure! Sadly, I don't even remember when that all changed. Probably when Grandma Normandy was no longer around to cook and serve it. Anyway, it's all the same to me.

The recipe sounds great, that I would like to try it. My sauce, whoops- I mean gravy doesn't even come close to my grandmothers.

Thanks Senior Citizen. Salute!

[senior citizen]

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[DianeM]

Originally Posted by senior citizen

Just out of curiosity, are you of Italian ancestry??? Of course people today call it sauce. So do I.

That's it. I am referring to those who came in the 1890's and early 1900's turn of the century to New York City from southern Italy and Naples.
I also call it sauce. I've said that over and over again. But my dad's family and others from New York City's Little Italy and southern Italy called it SUNDAY GRAVY.....as in "pass the gravy". I mentioned that in the late 1960's is when I began calling it sauce....in general. Marinara sauce was always sauce. Gravy was when it had all the meats in it.


Sunday Gravy | The Saturday Evening Post

Please read this above article from the SATURDAY EVENING POST re "Sunday Gravy".

Believe me when I say that it has to be generational....maybe regional.

This is about the southern Italians and their "Sunday Gravy" which I remember well.

It wasn't until about the late 1960's when we began calling it "sauce". (At the bottom of article, is a recipe for “sauce”.)

Up until I got married, it was "macaroni" and not "pasta" .
It was "gravy" and not "sauce.
I was married in 1965. So, yes your friends in the '60s called it sauce.
There was a "sea change" of words...........

My dad's family was from southern Italy and settled in lower Manhattan, Bronx
...then Brooklyn, Long Island, Staten Island, Queens, etc.

We lived in New Jersey. He moved there because my mom's family was there.

Other people we knew in northern New Jersey also called it "gravy".

Sunday gravy was a slow simmering sauce with all the meats in it. Not marinara sauce.

It was a meat sauce.....so maybe that's why they called it gravy. A ragout of meats.

That's the answer!!! 60's versus earlier. You called it. Great thinking.

No, I'm not Italian. I'm Scottish / Austrian. BUT I grew up in Astoria (Queens) NY where all of my friends were Italian and then moved to Long Island where all of my friends continued to be Italian. I was even an OSIA social member. I learned well what tastes wonderful. What I wouldn't give for a cannoli or a ricotta cheesecake.