Having a debate with a good Italian friend. Sauce or Gravy? What say you?

[Paper Roses]

I am older than my friend but we grew up about 10 miles as the crow flies. I call it sauce, she calls it gravy. We're both from Italian families. To me, gravy goes on a roast or a turkey!
Sauce is for spaghetti!

[In_The_Wind]

1. I always called it sauce.

But I know people who call it gravy.

[PoliticAverse]

2. Is it a thickened sauce made from juices from the meat or vegetables you cooked?

If so it's gravy.

[cbayer]

3. In the US, it's a regional thing. In the south, and particularly in New Orleans, they say gravy.

They distinguish between red gravy and brown gravy, but do not call it sauce.

But 10 miles away is pretty close for a regional difference.

[northoftheborder]

4. Gravy is a kind of sauce, but all sauce is NOT gravy!!

From this neck of the woods: gravy is a sauce made of meat juice and fat, with a flour thickener. served on meat, bread, potatoes. If no thickener, I call it au jus. (guess that means "just juice"??)

I'm not Italian, and had never eaten spaghetti sauce or pizza until a teenager. Really from the hicks down here. Sauce to me is any kind of sauce that does not have meat juice in it: such as tomato sauce, alfredo sauce, etc.. Interesting how words mean different things from different cultures! I love that show, "Way With Words" on NPR.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

18. So to you, Ragu Bolognese, because it is made largely of meat, is gravy?

I say that gravy is made of meat juices, some sort of liquid -- typically stock -- and a thickener. That is gravy, and nothing else is.

[pinto]

5. I grew up in a town with a large Sicilian population. Older folks call it gravy.

Younger generations call it sauce.

[libodem]

6. Sauce

The Sopranos called it gravy. They are my most personal reference.

[Auggie]

7. +1

[Melissa G]

8. l am Hispanic and we always ate a lot of pasta and

called it sauce. Had a boyfriend from an Italian family around Beaumont, Texas who always called tomato sauce 'gravy'.

His grandmother and aunts also made it with tomato paste and put whole hard boiled eggs in along with the meatballs. Something I had never seen before.

[Galileo126]

9. Have fun!

I grew up Rhode Island, and...

Those Nort' called it gravy, those Sout' called it sauce. It's a matter of regionalism.

Who cares? Just make a good sauce/gravy, OK?

Tomatoes are tomatoes, GEEZ! Make it happen!

[intheflow]

10. I'm going to go with sauce based on linguistics.

Sauce in Italian is "salsa."
Gravy in Italian is "sugo."

Salsa sounds more like sauce so I'm going to say that's more authentic.

It has nothing to do with the fact that I'm part Italian and my grandmother called it sauce. I'm completely unbiased that way!

[Freddie]

11. In South Philly, it's "gravy"

But as others have said it's a regional thing.

[msanthrope]

12. It's gravy. The stuff on turkeys is "brown gravy." Sauce is cream-based. nt

[The empressof all]

13. Sunday Gravy

Italian Sunday gravy is made with tomatoes and meat. I make mine with meatballs, sausage, braciolle, pancetta and chicken livers.

Gravy is usually simmered all day on the back burner.

[msanthrope]

15. Meatballs, sausage, braciolle, and pork neck bones, here. My secret ingredient is parmesan cheese

rind.

[The empressof all]

16. I have a hard time finding the neck bones though they are traditional

I sometimes add well browned country ribs or even one of those little Costco Pork roasts you get fairly inexpensively in the three pack.

Sunday Gravy is one of our family traditions. It's a lot of time but you get so much that the freezer is full for many more meals.....maybe even a lasagna!......I did one a few months ago with the gravy and a layer of bechemel that the family loved.


And I totally do the cheese too. Next time try adding chicken livers for the last half hour of cooking. Pulse them in the food processor and throw them in raw. They add even more richness and a fabulous mouth feel to the gravy.

[msanthrope]

17. I call ahead to the butcher---it's the only way.

Lasagna.....one of the things I love about Fall.

[Phentex]

14. My Sicilian mom says sucu...

which is sauce I guess. She puts it on basta.

[Hortensis]

19. Reminds me of my lesson long ago from a snooty clerk in a bookshop specializing in cookbooks.

When I walked in and cheerily announced I wanted to learn to make really good gravy, it was immediately clear I had said something wrong. She didn't know what gravy was, possibly miiight have heard of it, but not sure. While she took her posturing off to see what she could turn up, I headed for the southern cooking section and found something quite nice. I'm afraid I did also buy the book she eventually appeared with, though, James Peterson's "Sauces," newly out and just too impressive-appearing to walk away from.

As for your argument, obviously culture rules, but FWIW "Sauces" says braising short ribs for tomorrow's dinner (August, but I have a craving) will produce an "integral meat sauce," agrees that thickening that with flour would create a gravy (HE knew what gravy was), and the red stuff on spaghetti would be a puree-thickened sauce.

[laundry_queen]

20. Not Italian

so clearly not an authority, lol, but have eaten a lot of pasta and I have never, ever heard sauce for pasta called gravy by anyone (I'm in Canada, if that matters). Anything you put on pasta is sauce. Gravy is made from drippings from meat, thickened with flour and you put it on your meat and potatoes.

[Galileo126]

21. It depends....

I grew up in Rhode Island, and the northern folks called it 'gravy', and those south (still in the state) called it sauce.

(Granted, RI is only 30 x 40 miles, including Narraganset Bay).

I make it a point when I post to Cooking and Baking to call it a 'red sauce'. Because I consider "gravy" to be brown or blonde (beef or chicken based). Red? Tomatoes!

For more confusion.... my best friend is from northern RI, he call's it gravy (Italian mom, like me). My sister-in-law is from Italy (no really) but when she moved to the US, she relocated in northern RI, and she calls it gravy. Not sure if that was to be cool in her new local town, or what... I should ask her. I seriously doubt the folks from Italy call it "gravy".

(An aside... immigrants from Italy who located in RI almost always dropped the last vowel from spoken words to seem "Anglish". My grandpa did, my aunt did, my sis-in-law does... It's a a thing...wanting to belong. (I mean, c'mon...they you left their damn home to come to a country they don't know!?) It's not Prosciutto... it's prez-ute. It's not escarole... it's esh-ckarole.

It all depends on what the folks who came over here identify with. In closing....

I call it a 'sauce" - particularly... a "red sauce".

Speak any language or dialect, regardless of region, it still is my fave!

Gimme tomatoes!