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.