OK... What do you call Tomato Sauce... "Sauce" or "Gravy" ???

[vacerator]

Sicilians

call it "sugo" which means sauce. Amaggio sauce is chunky, served mainly with breaded steak Siciliano. Marinara is meatless sauce. Bolognese sauce can have meat, and wine.
There is also vodka red tomato sauce. Call it all gravy if you wish.
The french have 3 basic sauces. The mother sauce, or white sauce, also known as bechemel. Butter sauce, or Bernaise, and Gastrique's, which are meat and or wine sauces reduced by at least 1/3 to 1/2 to enhance flavors.

A thickened sauce from butter and flour is began with a roiux. When cream or milk is added, it becomes a white sauce, like for macaroni and cheese. Tempering in egg yolks and lemon juice makes it hollandaise sauce.
If stock, and or wine is added, it becomes a gumbo, etoufe', or gravy.
Is fille' gumbo a soup, or sauce, or a stew? I guess it depends on the meats and vegetables added

 

[joeekaitis]

Half-Italian on my mom's side . . .

 

She always called it sauce.  Gravy is what you make from meat or poultry pan drippings.

 

[foraloysius]

Vodka red tomato sauce

I'm sorry, but that is definitely not from Italy. A real Sicilian mama would never use vodka in one of her recipes. Most likely it comes from Sicilians in the USA who adepted their recipes.

 

[dermacie]

My late grandmother who came from southern Italy always called it sauce. She called all pasta macaroni. We lived in Pittsburgh, she almost always had meatballs, but we used the sauce like a gravy on any type of meat she may have served.

 

[agiflow2]

Technically it is sauce yes, but when it is cooked for a while and thickened up, that I guess is why some folks of Italian ancestry call it gravy. Gravy or sauce it delicious all the same !

 

[washerboy]

Deep South

Never heard it called gravy...it's sauce. Gravy is meat drippings/fat mixed with flour/corn starch, water or milk cooked until thick. To each his own is suppose

 

[revvinkevin]

Re: retro-man comment above "red gravy"

 

 

I did a quick search and found this.  Website says "for those who like marinara but like a smooth texture".  Note it also states "pasta sauce" on the lower part of the label.

 

[gyrafoam]

If you have lived in the North East triangle, you get used to people describing sauce as gravy especially in New Joisey. I love it either way and when in Rome---------.

 

[vacerator]

Yes, I'm certain

vodka sauce didn't originate in Italy. However, Italian specialty markets here make it as a standard variety.
Italy has several different styles of cuisine for the same foods. In Rome, gnocci is usually served with cheese, and no sauce, or a light wine with butter sauce.

My Sicilian born grandma always served it with her all day cooked meat tomato sauce.

She also had this huge porcelain table top board for polenta. She's dump it on there, spread it out, and then the sauce, sazitza (sausage and meatballs went over it all. No plates, just sit down with a fork and mangia.

 

[foraloysius]

I found this about a vodka sauce:

http://www.pasta-recipes-by-italians.com/vodka-sauce-recipe.html

I guess when it comes to gnocchi, it depends on the region what kind of sauce you eat with it. Gnocchi and melted butter and sage is a classic combination, but I know indeed with a tomatoe sauce or so.

A lot of the Italian recipes used in the USA are often Americanized recipes like spaghetti and meatballs. AFAIK there is a region (forgot which one) where they first eat pasta with the tomato sauce and in the next course the meatballs with vegetables but never spaghetti in one course with the meatballs.

Gennaro Contaldo recently made a video about childhood memories cooking spaghetti and meatballs. He got a lot of comment on that video, that it was not an Italian recipe. Also Anthony Bourdain got a lot of disdain from some Italians when he served them spaghetti and meatballs as Italian food.

 

[jkbff]

I've always understood gravy to be made in a pan that had meat in it, so a tomato gravy was made in a pan that meat was cooked in. Tomato sauce is just that, nothing to do with meat in the cooking process. Then you have your white gravy, brown gravy, chicken gravy, turkey gravy but how about this curve ball?

I have worked around a lot of Indian families (not Native American) and they always make gravy. It is not sauce, I was specifically told this. Generally tomato based, but it is never sauce.

 

[vacerator]

I guarantee that if

you were to visit my 5th. cousin's tratorria in Civitella Roveto Italy, near Avezzano, they have meat ball's on their menu everyday.

They may have been adapted from arroncini, as rice balls may have meat filling and or cheese, to sub plant a second starch with a pasta meal.

Italian's didn't invent pasta, or spaghetti, the Chinese did. Ravioli, kreplah, pierogi, etc., are all similar.

The Pennsylvania Dutch aren't Dutch either, they are German.

 

[foraloysius]

I have no doubt that your cousin has meatballs on the menu, but does he serve them in a tomato sauce on spaghetti?

 

[earthling177]

Look, this is pointless.

The other day the New York Times or Herald or whatever was interviewing "real Italian people" visiting NYC and their reactions to things.

ROFLMAO!!!

They behaved as if they were the only people who knew how to be True Italians[tm].

Among interesting things:

One of them was livid that people were eating a croissant (or some other pastry) right after lunch as if it was dessert with their coffee. Because, y'know, real Italians only eat that for breakfast. WTF? Sure, it may be a custom to eat it as breakfast, but it's not *forbidden* after that, is it? By whom?

Another woman was all up in arms that "things had too much garlic, and in Italy you only use onion *or* garlic, never the two together".

And scores of people complaining about the pasta with meatballs too.

Here's what I can tell you.

My entire family came *from* Italy. All places, North, South, Sicily etc.

The entire family cooks with garlic *and* onions in whatever way shape or form they want to.

They *all* have served pasta *with* meatballs in the same dish my entire life, and Italians all over South America and North America do that. I'm willing to bet that if you are serving several courses, the pasta might come in one course and the meat in another, while the poorer or people in a hurry probably just serve the dinner all at once, salad, pasta with meatballs, side dishes, and the only other course, if they'll have it, is dessert, which in my family was mostly during the weekends.

I would not doubt for a second that someone asked someone else to translate "sauce" from Italian into English, and the only "sauces" the English speaker knew of were "gravies" so they said "gravy" and it stuck. Or maybe something else happened.

It's something to talk about as curiosity and to know different regions, but it's not a big deal.

Just like you can't get a Latte or Marinara Sauce in Italy. Well, you *can*, but the latte will be just a cup of *milk*, no coffee, and Marinara is *not* tomato sauce like it's here, Marinara refers to the sea and they might give you some sauce made with shellfish or something, not just the "tomato sauce only, please" you get here.

Names like that just *sounded* fun or sold well in America and they stuck, it should not be surprising they happened in reverse like calling tomato-based sauce "gravy".

Before anyone complains that "that makes no sense", well, then, I will have to ask -- does it make *any* sense to you that Starbucks sells coffee or other drinks in "venti" size? "WTF are we talking about?"

"Venti" means 20 in Italian. As in 20 oz. ROFL!

Yeah, just ask for a 20 fluid ounce anything in Italy, let's see what happens?

If Starbucks knew anything about what they wanted to refer to, 20 fl. oz. is 591.47 ml, so they *should* be trying to sell a cup of about 600 ml if they cared; that would be "Seicento", not "venti".

Cheers,
   -- Paulo.

 

[foraloysius]

More about spaghetti and meatballs:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/is-spaghetti-and-meatballs-italian-94819690/

 

[earthling177]

The explanation about people finding more meat for a cheaper cost makes perfect sense to me. The part I'm having a little difficulty with is that spaghetti with meatballs is popular all over North and South America. I'd be satisfied with "well, Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp made it popular" except that my family ate it in South America since the 30's way before the movie.

So, I'm beginning to think it was firmly rooted in several places in Italian culture before they moved to the Americas.

Why do I think this? Because other dishes which originated in North America did not make it to South America, for example, Italian Wedding Soup.

Other dishes are even more confusing: Fettuccine Alfredo, for example -- researchers claim the dish *did* start in Italy, although the sauce was way more butter based than white sauce based, crossed the Atlantic to both North and South America, then apparently the restaurant in Rome which originated the dish closed and the dish disappeared from Italian repertoire around mid-60's. Italians currently claim Fettuccine Alfredo is an American dish, not Italian.

That's OK by me, I won't complain and I will try not to poke fun. Because really, instead of celebrating that their families went all over the world and came up with other dishes that share most of the ideas of Italian Cuisine, they're poo-pooing that it wasn't invented there. Oh, well. We'll just have to eat the many different varieties of Pizza that one can find in South and North America but not in Italy. Pity.

Although to be honest, everyone has their limits. Some people here insist Hawaiian pizza is great, while others will say that there's no place for pineapple in pizza.

;-)

 

[circlew]

My Uncle Joe (husband of my mom's sister Doris) was well known for his tomato sauce and meatballs. His parents had come from Italy to Mississippi in the early 20th century, so he got the recipe from them. Many times when visiting there he would make spaghetti, and this meatball sauce was served with it.

One time my Aunt Doris took the meatballs to a party that was attended by the wife of the governor of Mississippi, and she thought they were the best she'd ever eaten. My aunt knew her well, so she asked if he would be interested in making some for an event being held at the Governor's Mansion. He agreed to do so, and they were the hit of the party.

 

[foraloysius]

Paulo,

I'm always willing to learn. What region is your Italian family from? And do you know the Italian name for spaghetti and meatballs? I don't mean the literal translation ofcourse.

In no Italian cookbook, including the Culinaria Italia, I have there is a recipe for it and my Italian friend Irene doesn't know about it either. And then Anna del Conte, who covered the history of Italian food mentions that there is only one pasta dish in which meat is accompanied by pasta: Carne alla Genovese, braised beef served with penne. So I did my research, but I may have missed something.

Fettuccine Alfredo originates indeed from Italy but it was not made with cream. Half Italy would be running for the bathroom after eating a sauce with cream, so cream sauces are not very popular in Italy. A Carbonara is also often made with cream, but originally cream wasn't used in it.

 

[ea56]

I've heard the story that Fettuccine Alfedo was originated in Italy expressly for Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Mary Pickford when they were on their honeymoon in the early 1920's. The story goes that they were staying in a hotel somewhere in Italy and when Mary became hungry during the night they requested for the hotel chef to make them a little something, and this is the dish he came up with. His name was Alfredo hence, Fettuccini Alfedo came into the lexicon. But he prepared the dish with freshly grated parmesan and the rich Italian butter that was available to him, no cream. As I heard the story the butter was supposed to have been different than what we are used to, and had some cream in it making it like a cross between butter and fresh cream.

My Mom was raised near an Italian family in Oakland after her family moved here in 1935. Mrs. Bertoli taught my Mom Italian cooking and she was a great cook. One for the dishes that was Mom's specialty was Fettucinni Neapolitan. It starts out as Alfredo, but is then topped with a delcious tomato based sauce made with crushed tomatoes, mild Italian sausage, mushrooms, green onions, garlic, basil and beer, not wine, because thats what Mrs. Bertoli used. It was a spectacular dish! Most all of my parents friends were pure Italian and they all loved Mom's Fettuccini. Many of them had been to Italy and they all said that Moms' was the best they ever tasted. I'm the only one in the family that still knows how to make it, because I watched her and listened, it was never written down.

And as far as the gravy vs sauce, I believe that sauce is the West Coast vernacular for Italian tomato based pasta sauces, gravy is East Coast terminology. Either way, whatever you call it Italian food is the best!
Eddie

 

[gus]

Beginning by the end, I´m from Italian origin, but I might be mistaken. Pasta it´s all the food made from flour like gnocchi, ravioli , fetuccini, penne rhigati, etc. Noodles I assume it´s not Italian but Anglo American. Sauce is tomatoe sauce, and gravy it´s like a sort of marinade, some sort of juice you put over food cooked in oven or for salads. Those are my two cents. If I´m wrong correct me. Gus.