"Gravy" or "sauce"? - Page 3

I have never heard sauce called 'gravy' in Italy.    That is just an American thing. :)

I live in italy, and it's never called "sauce" here either - those English-speaking countries, always calling things in english! 

I think its an italian american thing. My family is pretty old school italian and I grew up calling meat tomato sauce gravy. Its just what I knew it as until I started having friends over when I was young and they were like wtf, gravy on pasta?

My grandparents were the generation that came over and spoke italian, not my parents, I'm only 20. But like many others here they quickly dropped the language, I don't know why and I wish they hadn't. I assume assimilation as mentioned earlier.

As to the sunday sauce and all that, we never really called it that but growing up at least 2 of the 4  sundays in a month my mother would start making gravy on saturday and sunday we had my grandparents and aunts uncles and whoever over for lunch/dinner. Also I feel i should mention my family and cousins are from CT just east of the city, because there seems to be some controversy around location and terminology.

Whatever I call it, it never comes. I always have to go and get it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by siduri 

I live in italy, and it's never called "sauce" here either - those English-speaking countries, always calling things in english! 

Oh you Italians, get on the gravy boat already!

Growing up here in Arizona as I did, we always called tomato based liquids (for lack of a better term) sauces.  But then my family are krauts so WTH do I know from Italian!  LOL

My Mom's parents came off the boat from Italy in the early 1900's and they never called sauce gravy.  They lived in New Jersey in Union City and in Canarsie, Brooklyn ~ my Mom never called it gravy either.  The first time I ever heard sauce called gravy was when I was in my 20's and my future mother-in-law called it gravy!!!  I was like, "What???"  Her mom came here with her parents when she was a teenager and lived just a few towns away in a town with a lot of Italians in Palisades Park, NJ.  My best friend from the time I was 5 lived across the street from me until we graduated from high school and her parents came here from Italy too (in Dumont, NJ).  Big extended family and I never, ever heard them call it gravy.  To this day, the only time I EVER heard that was when my mother-in-law would be cooking up a pot of sauce on Sundays and would call it that.  My mother also cooked the sauce, usually on a Sunday and so do I!!!  lol ~ 

My Mom says it is Salsa in Italian and it was misinterpreted when some Italians came to America.  Paulette also would refer to the sauce as a Ragu ~ but maybe that's because she would put a jar in there with the meatballs, sausage, pork or whatever else she would feel like throwing in there!  lol

Funny, but NY or NJ, my Grandparents were in Brooklyn most of that time (70+ years) and if any of their neighbors ever called it gravy, it didn't run off on my Grandma or any of her 6 children!!!  I don't even think I ever heard my husband call it gravy???   Just my mother-in-law!!! 

This question has been here many times before. Depends on where you came from, where you live now. It is also called Sunday sauce in some areas. In Brooklyn ol school it is Gravy. In Long Island it was Sauce. Call it whatever but it was good.