What do you call spaghetti sauce?

Crazy question that's been bugging me lately, and I can't think of a better place to find out if this is a regional thing.

Twice now on the HBO show "The Soprano's", I have heard what appears to be spaghetti/tomato sauce referred to as "gravy", as in "the gravy's good tonight" said at an Italian restaurant.

I have never heard this term before, and my Italian in-laws, of which the older generation is directly from Italy are not aware of this term. Is this a South Jersey thing?

First off, The Sopranos is based in North Jersey, not South Jersey. In Philly, a lot of Italians call it gravy. Same thing for NJ and the NYC metro area.

i call it spaghetti sauce... but my very italian brother in law and his family call it gravy...either way it's the same thing-- basically -- .. but to me-- gravy is what you put on roast beef and mashed taters!! oh well..to each his own i guess..

It depends. If I cook some sort of meat -- sausage, meatballs, a roast -- in it it's gravy. Otherwise it's sauce. Most Italian folks where I grew up always called it gravy.

On my block in Jamaica, Queens, in the early 1960s, my cousin's family called it gravy. My family called it sauce. That's just on one block, so imagine the differences in the cosmos. What will we discover that they called it on Mars? I do agree with Jerseygirl, personally: Gravy was brown and went on the roast beef and potatoes. Sadly, my mother's came in a can that had Franco-American on the label. Her sauce wasn't much better. Now, the grandmother's sauce....something else again!

I call it sauce, but know many Italians -- Jersey folks and others -- who call it gravy.

quote:

Originally posted by jerseygirl127

i call it spaghetti sauce... but my very italian brother in law and his family call it gravy...either way it's the same thing-- basically -- .. but to me-- gravy is what you put on roast beef and mashed taters!! oh well..to each his own i guess..

Me too. If it's on spaghetti it's spaghetti sauce. (Or ---sauce for whatever pasta is used.) If it's on taters or some such and made with pan drippings, etc., it's gravy. Not a big deal: local nomenclature has to be in charge.

In Boston it's "macaroni and gravy". When I first heard this I thought.....EWWWWWWWWWWWW........macaroni with (beef?) gravy??? THAT'S NASTY. Until I learned that "gravy" is tomato sauce. In our Italian family it was just called "sauce" since Nona didn't make any other "sauce" than tomato! Beurre blanc was unheard of at Nona's! Ravioli got plain homemade tomato sauce and gnocchi ALWAYS got meat sauce.

you know i grew up in a VERY italian family in just out side of Boston and we called it sauce---had an uncle that wouldoccaionally use the term "gravy" but it was rare---and it almost always had meat---except for lent and fridays---usually a boston butt browned to start the sauce that was left in it to fall apart---awesome on gnocchi!!!!!

Thanks for all the replies. Looks like this is a very regionalized term with some people in the same area using either term for the same thing.

CheeseWit, you're right, the Soprano's is based in Northern Jersey. But I never hear anyone refer to themselves as being from Northern Jersey which is what made me think further south. I've heard many guests on talk shows comment they were from "Sudden Joisey" and may have grown up like on the Soprano's but for luck.

Tiki, your comment about the meat reminds me of my late Mother-in-Law. On Sundays, we often used to go to her house for dinner and there was always a big pot of sauce with cubed chunks of meat simmered for so many hours that it just melted in your mouth. And there were the meatballs and sausage she also added. This was followed by a large salad of lettuce, tomato, and olives. I was used to eating my salad first, so the next time we ate there, she served it that way to make me feel comfortable.

quote:

Originally posted by berndog

Thanks for all the replies. Looks like this is a very regionalized term with some people in the same area using either term for the same thing.

CheeseWit, you're right, the Soprano's is based in Northern Jersey. But I never hear anyone refer to themselves as being from Northern Jersey which is what made me think further south. I've heard many guests on talk shows comment they were from "Sudden Joisey" and may have grown up like on the Soprano's but for luck.

Tiki, your comment about the meat reminds me of my late Mother-in-Law. On Sundays, we often used to go to her house for dinner and there was always a big pot of sauce with cubed chunks of meat simmered for so many hours that it just melted in your mouth. And there were the meatballs and sausage she also added. This was followed by a large salad of lettuce, tomato, and olives. I was used to eating my salad first, so the next time we ate there, she served it that way to make me feel comfortable.

Thats the sauce alright!! My mom always claimed that Italians ate salad last because we had antipasto first and besides--salad was like jello--you always room for it!!

If it is served on spaghetti, I call it sauce, but if i make what I call hamburger gravy, i serve it on rice.

quote:

Originally posted by tiki

quote:

Originally posted by berndog

Thanks for all the replies. Looks like this is a very regionalized term with some people in the same area using either term for the same thing.

CheeseWit, you're right, the Soprano's is based in Northern Jersey. But I never hear anyone refer to themselves as being from Northern Jersey which is what made me think further south. I've heard many guests on talk shows comment they were from "Sudden Joisey" and may have grown up like on the Soprano's but for luck.

Tiki, your comment about the meat reminds me of my late Mother-in-Law. On Sundays, we often used to go to her house for dinner and there was always a big pot of sauce with cubed chunks of meat simmered for so many hours that it just melted in your mouth. And there were the meatballs and sausage she also added. This was followed by a large salad of lettuce, tomato, and olives. I was used to eating my salad first, so the next time we ate there, she served it that way to make me feel comfortable.

Thats the sauce alright!! My mom always claimed that Italians ate salad last because we had antipasto first and besides--salad was like jello--you always room for it!!

I've always heard it called sugo, pronounced with sh as in sugar.
Sugo is Italian for gravy.

I always called it sauce until I was invited to an Italian co-worker's house for "macaroni and gray", which was spaghetti with sauce. She lived in South Philly.

Since the Sundancer is from Knoxville, TN, had minimum exposure to the Italian influence and only knew what existed in my area, I only knew red sauce with Italian seasoning. I had never heard it called gravy. I have been in Minneosta where they called sausage gravy white sauce.

There is a lot of variation that I have been exposed to such as red sauce with meat, red sauce with Italian seasoning, red sauce with sausage and red sausage with cheese.

Personally, I only have only heard it called spaghetti sauce and it was always red.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

My grandmother was born and raised in east Harlem and she always called spaghetti sauce "gravy."

In East Tennessee, gravy was either sausage gravy or beef gravy or pork gravy or chicken gravy. Spaghetti sauce was spaghetti sauce. I am certain that it is a regional thing.

If you come to East Tennessee and ask for gravy, I am absolutely certain you will not get spaghetti sauce.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

I've been known to get "Sauced" now and then...but never "Gravyed" I don't mean to complicate things, but where does the connection to alcohol join this definition?

Mr. Mayor: Alcohol has been around since before the time of Jesus. You will notice that he turned the water into wine, not Diet Pepsi or Kool Aide. Alcohol fits right in here just fine particularly around spaghetti sauce. Getting sauced is perfectly OK during this time of the year. In fact since it is getting close to 5:00PM, I may start early.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

Having been fortunate to be the only child of an Italian Mother.....I was forced into tomato-canning slavery at an early age.
There were crushed tomatoes, whole plum tomatoes, marinara sauce, marinara with basil and tomatoes destined to be turned into Bolognaise sauce. Oh, it was a SCIENCE!! "Mom, why can't we just lump this stuff all together?" "BECAUSE WE CAN'T" was the answer. So there we were for hours and hours and hours, processing the tomatoes and then canning them. We always called it "sauce" (not Gravy like in New England). No wonder I became a chef......

I've always called it sauce. I had never even heard the term gravy used for sauce until I started on "Road Food"

I had some good Italian friends from Brooklyn, NY who called what they put on pasta "gravy". They did distinguish it from what I called spaghetti sauce by the lack of meat. To them, "gravy" was always a tomato sauce and if you wanted meat with your pasta and gravy, you'd have it on top.

quote:

Originally posted by berndog

Thanks for all the replies. Looks like this is a very regionalized term with some people in the same area using either term for the same thing.

CheeseWit, you're right, the Soprano's is based in Northern Jersey. But I never hear anyone refer to themselves as being from Northern Jersey which is what made me think further south. I've heard many guests on talk shows comment they were from "Sudden Joisey" and may have grown up like on the Soprano's but for luck.

Only thing I would take issue with would be someone supposedly being from "Sudden Joisey". Why I'm bothering to pick that apart, I don't know, but it bothers me for some reason. First of all, nobody would ever say "Southern" Jersey. It's either South Jersey or, if you're being formal, "Southern New Jersey." It's just not said. And the worst part of whoever was on those talk shows could NEVER have been from South Jersey and pronounced it "Joisey". There really is a dividing line between a "Philadelphia accent" and a "New York accent". I've known all my life that North Jersey is like a different continent, almost, from South Jersey. And then there's the "South Jersey accent", but it's hard to distinguish it, and I've only been able to for about 10 years now. And yes, I have a "Philly accent" and proud! It's totally different from anything!

Oh yeah about the sauce/gravy thing. Every Italian I've known who was from this regional area has called it gravy. And any pasta at all was "the macaronis" and that was pluralized. It was "the macaronis and the gravy".

And my daughter's dating a South Philly Italian boy now...no emoticon for that one and I was looking to put one at the end of this.

Hmmm. I'm from New England and we always called it tomato sauce, but it's quite possible I didn't hang out in the REAL Italian neighborhoods. I never knew of this use of "gravy" until I heard it in a movie.

Always been spaghetti sauce down here. If you ask for gravy you'll get something white or brown.

We call it spaghetti sauce here in Iowa, but my sister's Sicilian in-laws living in Kansas City call it something like sooloo or sulu -- not sure what that means -- or how it is spelled.

Thanks for a very interesting topic. As a west coast boy who knew few italians, this subject is completely new and fascinating.

quote:

Originally posted by cindyloo

We call it spaghetti sauce here in Iowa, but my sister's Sicilian in-laws living in Kansas City call it something like sooloo or sulu -- not sure what that means -- or how it is spelled.

Sugo, as in shu-go, means gravy

quote:

Originally posted by enginecapt

quote:

Originally posted by cindyloo

We call it spaghetti sauce here in Iowa, but my sister's Sicilian in-laws living in Kansas City call it something like sooloo or sulu -- not sure what that means -- or how it is spelled.

Sugo, as in shu-go, means gravy

You beat me to it.

'Course, down south here, we have Swamp Gravy. Made with tasty 'maters, onions, 'taters, et.al. Not too good on pasta, though. Mighty tasty with some fried brim & hushpuppies.