REAL ITALIANS: Is it SAUCE or is it GRAVY??...

[DarkFudge2000]

Im having a debate with some friends at work about the term true italians (In Italy, not Bay Ridge, Brooklyn) refer to tomato sauce on their spagetti or other food.

Would a conversation at the dinner table be,

"Hey Ma, pass the gravy..."


or would it be

"Hey Ma, pass the sauce..."


Which phrase would true Italians use?????


Help me clear this up please!!

 

[shoRunner]

I bet it would be neither, since they'd be speaking in italian

 

[CalvinHobbes]

As far as I know in Italy it is called gravy except on pizza where it's called sauce.

 

[AnnonUSA]

We always called it "gravy" around the table, but we now know (or always knew) it should be "Sauce".

 

[Eli]

This thread makes my head hurt.

Marinara sauce = gravy?

Crazy Italians.

 

[oddyager]

It's sauce.

 

[RbSX]

Originally posted by: DarkFudge2000
Im having a debate with some friends at work about the term true italians (In Italy, not Bay Ridge, Brooklyn) refer to tomato sauce on their spagetti or other food.

Would a conversation at the dinner table be,

"Hey Ma, pass the gravy..."


or would it be

"Hey Ma, pass the sauce..."


Which phrase would true Italians use?????


Help me clear this up please!!

It's not a gravy, how would anyone ever think it is a 'gravy'?

Gravy is something that is generally mixed with fat, meat juice and stock/flour.

A sauce has a base of veggies with other things add it in.

I can't believe how retarded this question is.

 

[Legendary]

Gravy requires a meat juice component.
If the sauce does not contain such a thing, it's just a damn sauce.

 

[DarkFudge2000]

:HEY WAZZA MATTA WIT U!?" (smack on the back of the head)

I Didnt ask you to chemically disect the ingredients and gimme a position paper!"


I asked Italians to respond with what term they use!


The rest of you..."Shaddup u fache!"

 

[Anubis]

im italian,
its sauce

 

[RbSX]

Originally posted by: DarkFudge2000
:HEY WAZZA MATTA WIT U!?" (smack on the back of the head)

I Didnt ask you to chemically disect the ingredients and gimme a position paper!"


I asked Italians to respond with what term they use!


The rest of you..."Shaddup u fache!"

You don't need to be italian to tell you what the correct term is, if an italian said it was gravy they wouldn't be any less wrong.

Now you're just obnoxious.. and an idiot.

 

[DarkFudge2000]

Whoaaah, my friend......no need for name callin here. I was just usin a little of my NY Italian dilect for effect. No harm, no foul!

 

[mugs]

There was a scene about this in the Sopranos when they went to Italy. Paulie Walnuts asked for gravy, they looked at him confusedly and then made fun of him in Italian for being a stupid American.

I don't know the answer to your question though, and apparently everyone in this thread missed the fact that you're looking for the opinions of Italians from Italy, not Italian-Americans.

 

[Linflas]

First time I ever heard it referred to as gravy was on The Sopranos. It was always called sauce on the Italian side of my family.

 

[Crucial]

In Italy there are sugo and salsa. Sugo derives from succo (juices), and refers to pan drippings from the cooking of meats, rich meat-based sauces along the lines of sugo alla Bolognese, or thick vegetable sauces (which often, though not always, go over pasta). A salsa is a semi-liquid-to-liquid raw or cooked sauce that's used as a condiment. It can go over pasta, for example pesto alla genovese, but can also be used to season other dishes.

The passage from sugo/salsa to sauce/gravy must have occurred when immigrant families settled into new neighborhoods in the US, and is, I expect, an Italian-American family/neighborhood tradition more than anything else. Some immigrants translated the Italian for what they put on their pasta as gravy, while others translated it as sauce, and the translations have been passed down through the generations.

Looks like both are right as long as your family agrees with you.

 

[halik]

gravy is what you put on a turkey

 

[moshquerade]

Originally posted by: Anubis
im italian,
its sauce

so when someone says "he got into the sauce" you don't think the guy is boozing it?

 

[sonambulo]

It doesn't matter either way. Both are just translations of 'salsa.'

 

[Linflas]

Originally posted by: moshquerade

Originally posted by: Anubis
im italian,
its sauce

so when someone says "he got into the sauce" you don't think the guy is boozing it?

It's all about context much like the difference between getting pissed and being pissed off.

 

[darkxshade]

neither, it's stew

 

[Tylanner]

gravy transcends "Italians"

it is not gravy

 

[imported_Champ]

sauce...i've never heard it called gravy and i'm from an Italian family

 

[Turin39789]

Originally posted by: Linflas

Originally posted by: moshquerade

Originally posted by: Anubis
im italian,
its sauce

so when someone says "he got into the sauce" you don't think the guy is boozing it?

It's all about context much like the difference between getting pissed and being pissed off.

and pissed on

 

[zinfamous]

When living in Italy, I only ever saw or heard the equivalent of "sauce"

Menu-wise, you never actually saw that word, though. It's simply Penne alla Marinara, Spaghetti alla Bolognese (meat), or Penne al' Arrabiatta (Angry), etc....

 

[sjwaste]

It's gravy, per a direct translation. We call it gravy at home too. We have other sauces that are literally translated as sauce, but generally they aren't the kind you'd put on pasta.

Generally speaking, this is more a topic for Americans to argue about than it is for Italians and Italian-Americans to actually care. In Italian, we know what each other are talking about whether the word sugo or salsa is used, but we tend to use it properly depending on what type of gravy or sauce is being discussed.

The stuff you're used to eating out of a jar or making at home, especially the ever popular meat sauces, would be a type of sugo in Italian, or gravy. There are sauces for pasta too, which would be salse in Italian (plural there), like salsa finta (which is usually a quick sauce made from ripe tomato pureed or diced and quickly sauteed with basic seasonings).

Anyhow, I'm Italian-American, so maybe not the full qualification of what you were looking for here. But I'm first generation and a native/prior-to-English Italian speaker. We've discussed this at home, and it always comes down to being a regional American absurdity rather than an actual point of discussion.

But we have better things to care about, like what we're having for dinner