On 9/6/2016 6:33 AM, Cindy Hamilton wrote:
> On Monday, September 5, 2016 at 2:32:24 PM UTC-4, Ophelia wrote:

>>
>> Of course!! <g> To me that sounds more like a sauce, but then
>> it's just different words to describe the same things eh?
>
> It's pretty common (as I understand it) on the U.S. East Coast to refer
> to a long-cooked ragu as "gravy". My pure guess on the origin is that
> when Italians started coming to America and were learning English, their
> neighbors didn't use the word "sauce" (which is kind of fancy), but did
> use "gravy". Thus, a saucy concoction served over food is "gravy".

Could even be a regional thing in Italy. My wife's grandparents came
from southern Italy in the early 1900's and she was brought up calling
it gravy.

So do these guys
http://tuttorossotomatoes.com/recipe...-italian-gravy

https://jovinacooksitalian.com/2014/...-sunday-gravy/
The passage from sugo/salsa to sauce/gravy must have occurred when
immigrant families settled into new neighborhoods in the U.S. and became
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, becoming the definitive
lable in the process. People get amazingly passionate over things like this.