Tomato Sauce or Gravy

[jeffperez62]

Over dinner last night the argument started.....is it tomato sauce or gravy??? Who the hell started calling it gravy?

[petite tête de chou]

Not me.

[Gifted Gourmet]

Apparently any number of people call it this:

Tomato gravy .. really!

[Maison Rustique]

A Sicilian friend of mine and his family always call it that.

[mjr_inthegardens]

Very common among NYC italian families. Mostly sicilian backgrounds, or southern.

[GordonCooks]

One side of my fiancee's family says macaroni and gravy and the other says pasta and sauce

[slkinsey]

It's an old-school American-Italian thing to call it "gravy."

It should be mentioned, however, that Italian doesn't always differentiate between "sauce" and "gravy." There are two Italian words for sauce: salsa and sugo.

Thus, tomato sauce might be called salsa di pomodoro but it might also be called sugo rosso (red sauce). Sugo di carne can mean gravy in the sense that it is commonly understood in English, but it might also mean "meat sauce."

So, calling the typical long-simmered Italian-American tomato-and-meat sauce "gravy" isn't all that far from the mark.

[KatieLoeb]

Anyone from South Philly calls it gravy.

[hwilson41]

A very dear friend of ours, originally from NJ, calls it gravy. Her version is enough to bring tears to the eyes of a strong man - fried sausage, the best homemade meatballs ever to cross a lip, tomatoes, onions, etc., etc. And a few secret steps about which we've been sworn to secrecy. Absolute dynamite, but "gravy" it ain't (or so I tell her) .

THW

Edited because I can't type with this damned bandaid on my hand .

Edited December 10, 2004 by hwilson41 (log)

[Tonyy13]

Anyone from Providence (up on the hill) who is, or wishes that they were (as if it were being part of a diety or something...) Italian call it gravy. It drives me nuts for someone to come into the kitchen to ask to put up a side of gravy, and you have to ask them which color, brown or red?????

[Moopheus]

In my mother's family (from East Boston) it's always called gravy (my grandfather was Sicilian). It sounds like this must have been common usage in Italian families all up and down the East Coast. Weirdly, I was just reminded of this by something else earlier this morning.

[slbunge]

This is interesting. My grandmother was born in Calabria in Southern Italy and emigrated with her family to the US when she was young settling in Utica, NY. She moved to the Chicago area when she married and as far as I know always spoke of 'tomato sauce'. Based on the evidence above, it seems like she might have grown up knowing it (in English) as gravy.

Anyone from upstate New York care to comment on the use of 'gravy' vs 'sauce'?

Edited December 10, 2004 by slbunge (log)

[tryska]

This is interesting.  My grandmother was born in Calabria in Southern Italy and emigrated with her family to the US when she was young settling in Utica, NY.  She moved to the Chicago area when she married and as far as I know always spoke of 'tomato sauce'.  Based on the evidence above, it seems like she might have grown up knowing it (in English) as gravy.

Anyone from upstate New York care to comment on the use of 'gravy' vs 'sauce'?

←

i grew up in syracuse and it was sauce with the italians i knew.

i moved downstate and it was gravy.

[cakewalk]

Reminds me of old friends (a married couple). Felicetti called it gravy; Di Gregorio called it sauce. (Or was it the other way around?) They used to argue over it. Felicetti grew up in the Bronx, Di Gregorio in Queens. I don't know where in Italy their families were from.

[slbunge]

i grew up in syracuse and it was sauce with the italians i knew.

i moved downstate and it was gravy.

←

Thanks.

[rickster]

On the other hand my Sicilian-American girlfriend's family, who emigrated to East Harlem and then moved slightly upstate, always call it sauce. After watching an episode of the Sopranos, I asked them if they ever called it gravy and they were outright offended by the suggestion.

[pete ganz]

My family's background is Sicilian and we call it sauce. My friend's background (we live in the same town) is also Sicilian and they call it gravy. No rhyme or reason I guess.....

[russ parsons]

italians differentiate between a salsa (sauce) and ragu (gravy). the first is added to the dish, the second is intrinsic to it. an example would be a tomato salsa that is made by chopping tomatoes and adding it to the pasta at the last minute. a ragu would be made by chopping tomatoes and cooking it with braised meat for a long time (the meat would usually be served separately, the gravy would go on the pasta as a separate course).

[cakewalk]

a ragu would be made by chopping tomatoes and cooking it with braised meat for a long time (the meat would usually be served separately, the gravy would go on the pasta as a separate course).

←

So even though the gravy is used separately -- as a sauce (as it were) -- it wouldn't be called a sauce because of the way in which it was made? I mean, well, you know what I mean.

[foodE]

It is gravy, of course.

[slkinsey]

italians differentiate between a salsa (sauce) and ragu (gravy). the first is added to the dish, the second is intrinsic to it. an example would be a tomato salsa that is made by chopping tomatoes and adding it to the pasta at the last minute. a ragu would be made by chopping tomatoes and cooking it with braised meat for a long time (the meat would usually be served separately, the gravy would go on the pasta as a separate course).

Where does sugo fit into this? I'm away from my Zingarelli right now, but I've always known ragù as a word meaning a thick stew-like sauce.

Interesting information on this whols subject to be found here. The author seems to share my feeling that "gravy" comes from sugo. It is worthy of note that the "meat drippings and flour" sauce we call "gravy" hardly exists in Italy, and definitely not in the Southern regions from which came most of the immigrants to America.

On ragù, I found this interesting:

I checked Ragù in Antonio Piccinardi's Dizionario di Gastronomia. He says,

"Ragù: A word of French origin that is applied to dishes that differ considerably, but share as a common characteristic the use of meat that's cooked for a long time in a sauce, which is generally destined to go over pasta. There are two main kinds of ragù: one is made with ground meat, and the other from a single piece of meat slowly cooked for a very long time, to which other ingredients can be added. In addition, a number of dishes typical of the southern Regions are called al ragù, for example carne al ragù or braciole al ragù, which consist of slabs of meat of varying size, rolled up around flavoring agents and cooked slowly.

The first type of ragù includes dishes of the Emilian tradition, as well as those from Bari or Sardegna, while the second group includes all the southern dishes."

[Toliver]

I thought if it was made with meat, it was gravy and if it wasn't, then it was sauce.

[russ parsons]

you're probably right sam. i've always understood sugo and ragu to be used interchangeably, depending on the region.

[Pan]

Over dinner last night the argument started.....is it tomato sauce or gravy???

←

Tomato sauce.

[slkinsey]

i've always understood sugo and ragu to be used interchangeably, depending on the region.

Yep, just like everything in Italy.

I've spent more time in Le Marche than anywhere else (Rossini festival in Pesaro), and they actually use both words, which is perhaps where my own regional bias comes in. My recollection is that sugo is mostly liquid with some small pieces of stuff in it, and that ragù is small pieces of stuff with some liquid in it. But, of course, this probably changes a hundred kilometers in either direction...