LogFAQs > #980012188

ConfusedTorchic posted...

or, as it's known better

a white gravy

Not my fault people don't know what things are called. Take that route, and there's no reason to consider sauces and gravies separate concepts. I'll be sure to keep that in mind the next time I put strawberry gravy on my ice cream.

Sahuagin posted...

I would say that in your examples you are merging the concepts, which is valid, but not the same as unifying the categories. if I say "gravy", generally that will not include spaghetti sauce, and vice-versa. if I make something that has properties of both, you can say it's technically both, but the categories themselves don't merge. you can't really define one of these in terms of the other ("a spaghetti sauce is a gravy that... or a gravy is a spaghetti sauce that..."). they are both sauces. and you could have a sauce that has both qualities. but one category does not come from the other, they are sibling categories descended from a more general concept.

I would say that all gravies are sauces ("sauce" being any liquid added to a dish, distinct from broth being liquid that a dish is primarily cooked in) but not all sauces are gravies. Gravies are then specifically sauces made using byproducts from cooking something else that isn't part of the sauce.

Sahuagin posted...

(not finding many sources for meatless gravy. a gravy without meat is really just something emulating gravy. generally "real" gravy involves meat juices; no-meat gravies are exceptions.)

In general, yeah, vegetarian gravies tend to be a matter of cooking veggies down into a sauce more so than thickening veggie juices. Conceptually, though, I don't see any reason it couldn't extend to meatless options.

One notable exception to my definition, though, is onion gravy: That's made by caramelizing onions and cooking them down in broth that then gets thickened, so that's a case where you do have the primary flavour component mixed into the sauce, but it's still considered a gravy. I'm okay with calling that an exception to the rule, though.