If you grew up in an Italian-American household like I did, you probably learned early on that the word you use for what’s inside that pot on the stove says a lot about where your family came from.
In much of Italy, it’s simply sugo, what English speakers call sauce. It’s straightforward, tomato-based, and named for what it is. But when Italians immigrated to America, especially from Southern Italy, something changed.
Meat became more plentiful. Sunday meals became bigger. The sauce simmered longer, richer, heavier - so rich that “sauce” didn’t feel big enough anymore. Calling it gravy wasn’t about translation; it was about feeling. In English, gravy meant something hearty, slow-cooked, and meant to be poured generously.
So some families kept the word. Not because it was technically correct, but because it was emotionally right.
Today, “gravy” and “sauce” don’t really describe what’s in the pot. They describe memory, family, and tradition. And in the end, the truth is simple: whatever you call it, if it was made with love and simmered all day, you’re doing it right.
The basic equation on this is simple. If there's no meat in it, it's Marinara. Add the meat - any kind - and bingo, gravy. Ya get that now?
My grandparents enigrated to the USA from a small village in the province of Salerno in the 1870s. Through the years when I was growing up our family was as Italian as could be. I was raised with Grandma's recipes passed down to my aunts and they taught my mom. Every Thiursday was spaghetti night iin our home. Spaghetti with with tomato sauce. Everything was with sauce - Lasgna, braciole, etc. It was always "sauce" . With or without meat - always sauce. Even in the local Italian restaurants where I grew up it was sauce on the menu - never gravy. I never heard anyone refer to Italian tomato sauce as gravy until i heard it in the Godfather movie. To all my family gravy is the brown stuff served with beef, roast pork, etc.
ReplyDeleteI'm from the south. Gravy is either brown or (even better) white. That in the picture was definitely sauce.
ReplyDeleteMy Graandmother always called it gravy, and she made gallons at a time. And it had smoked ham hocks, meatballs with pignolis, sausages, veal chops, pork ribs, and sometimes braciole.
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