Sauce or Gray??

[ShotoJuku]

[COLOR="Navy"]This is just one of those "take your mind off your studies for a minute or two" questions.....Mangi!

In YOUR house, what is the name of the RED "stuff" that you eat over pasta dishes - sauce or gravy???[/COLOR]

[cookderosa]

[COLOR="Navy"]This is just one of those "take your mind off your studies for a minute or two" questions.....Mangi!

In YOUR house, what is the name of the RED "stuff" that you eat over pasta dishes - sauce or gravy???[/COLOR]

Wow, small sample

My husband is Italian- so he says "gravy" when he's being cute...however we are both trained chefs, so "tomato sauce" is almost always what we say "for real" when we refer to the red stuff that we eat over pasta.

[PonyGirl93]

WHOA. Some people call it gravy???

[FlameLeaf-Nefarious]

We call it sauce if it's put over pasta. Now, I have made a tomato gravy before, it's only called gravy if it's put over biscuits.
I never knew anyone called it gravy if over pasta-who would have thought it!

[april004]

I vote for sauce!

[marianne202]

I agree we call it sauce. We lived in northern Italy for 3 years and always heard it referred to as a sauce. Gravy is white with sausage and smothers your biscuits or brown and filling your mountain of smashed potatoes!

[Tasman]

I call it sauce. Gravy we put on roast lamb/turkey

[cookderosa]

Wikipedia:

In most of the U.S., "tomato sauce" refers to a tomato concentrate with salt, herbs and small amounts of spices and often flavored with meat or seafood. It is sold in bottles and cans. This product is considered incomplete and not normally used as it is. Instead, it is used as a base for almost any food which needs a lot of tomato flavor, including versions of many of the sauces described on this page. Tomato purÃe and and tomato paste have FDA standards of identity (since 1939) for percentage of tomato solids, and generally do not contain seasonings other than salt; tomato sauce is nonstandardized.[6]

Marinara sauce is an American-Italian term for a simple tomato sauce with herbs—mostly parsley and basil—but, contrary to its name (which is Italian for coastal, seafaring) without anchovies, fish or seafood. In other countries, marinara refers to a seafood and tomato sauce.

Some Italian Americans on the East Coast refer to tomato sauce as "gravy", "tomato gravy", or "Sunday gravy", especially sauces with a large quantity of meat simmered in them, similar to the Italian Neapolitan ragù. "Gravy" is an erroneous English translation from the Italian sugo which means juice, but can also mean sauce (as in sugo per pastasciutta). The expression for "gravy" in Italian is sugo dell'arrosto, which is literally "juice of a roast" and is specifically not tomato sauce.[7]

**

This explains why my husband says gravy. He's from Long Island.

[ShotoJuku]

This explains why my husband says gravy. He's from Long Island.

Interesting...having grown up on Naga Shima (LI) and been Italian (by marriage) for nearly 28-years, I've known the "Red Stuff" as sauce but have heard a couple of "Jersey" Italians say gravy. I too believe these are regional expressions per se, but wonder just how large is the region (or where it has spread to).

[marianne202]

I grew up in a very Italian home in PA and never heard them refer to tomato sauce as gravy. My Italian immigrant grandparents were from Southern Italy and since I lived in Northern Italy and never heard it referred to anything other than sauce, I wonder if it was adapted in the US to fit in with other ethnic groups or if it was a "lost in translation" mistake that just stuck?