Well, what can I say? I just checked again and I'm afraid that is not correct.
The symbolic icons (indeed without shadow) included in nouveGnomeGray are indeed present in the scalable/actions and scalable/categories directories as SVG files, but not as PNGs the 16x16/actions and 16x16/categories directories. What *is* present in 16x16/actions and 16x16/categories are the PNG files of the non-symbolic variant, i.e., with shadowing.
I was able to get the icons displayed correctly in the apps by placing files with the names I mentioned in the 16x16 directories.
Hm, maybe some problem with the packaging of the theme?