a saucelight tomato sauce
also: light-tomato barbecue sauce · vinegar-and-ketchup sauce · thin red sauce
It is 'the sauce' at the counter; the map calls it light tomato.
Vinegar-and-pepper sauce with ketchup added — enough to redden and sweeten it a little, not enough to thicken it — and often cayenne or a bottled hot sauce. The state tourism office's description is the whole recipe: 'a vinegar-and-pepper sauce with ketchup added for a little sweetness'. It is the sauce of South Carolina's Pee Dee and upper Midlands on the state's four-sauce map, and the same idea as the Lexington dip across the line, which the South Carolina Barbeque Association counts as the same sauce. It goes on chopped pork at the block and stands on the table.
The story Cited · web-scba-bbq-history
The South Carolina Barbeque Association dates the light tomato sauce to about 1900, 'vinegar and pepper with tomato ketchup added'; Wikipedia ties it to the affordability of mass-produced ketchup in the early twentieth century and to North Carolina's influence. The barbecue-sauce article's timeline agrees: sugar, ketchup and Worcestershire entered sauces in the 1920s. Kovacik and Winberry's 1987 geography of the state drew the four regions the tourism office still publishes, and Robert Moss answers that there are really two sauces, mustard and vinegar, of which this is a variant. Inference — the sauce is the vinegar tradition's own sweetening, made in the same kitchens that kept the older sauce, which is why on the map it shares the Pee Dee with vinegar-and-pepper rather than displacing it.
How it is done Tradition
Cider vinegar, salt, black pepper, crushed red pepper; ketchup by the spoon until it colors; water to thin; cayenne or hot sauce; sugar if the house likes. Warmed, not cooked down. On the block it goes into the chopped meat; on the table it is the second bottle beside vinegar-and-pepper or mustard.
Today Cited · web-texas-pete-eastern-carolina
On the table at Pee Dee and upper-Midlands pits under the house name; Texas Pete's bottled Eastern Carolina BBQ Sauce — apple cider vinegar, tomato paste, red pepper flakes, sugar — is, by this map's terms, a light tomato sauce.
Facts
| base | light-tomato |
|---|---|
| styles | Light tomato barbecue, Lexington-style barbecue |
| region | The Pee Dee, The Upstate, The North Carolina Piedmont, The Carolinas |
| links | South Carolina's Four Barbecue Sauces — Discover South Carolina · BBQ History — South Carolina Barbeque Association |
| confidence | medium · needs verification · updated 2026-09-16 |
On the label
| what was read | bottle · T.W. Garner Food Company, Winston-Salem, NC |
|---|---|
| vinegar | #1 on the label |
| tomato | #2 on the label |
| mustard | — |
| sugar | #4 on the label |
| sugar per tablespoon | 1 g (a tablespoon of table sugar is about 12.6 g) |
| sodium per tablespoon | 3.5 mg |
| heat, by the label's own word | medium |
| the label, in order | Apple Cider Vinegar, Tomato Paste, Red Pepper Flakes, Sugar |
Read from this page, 2026-09-16. A North Carolina bottle, read here for its order rather than its region: four ingredients, vinegar first, tomato paste second, one gram of sugar to the tablespoon and 3.5 mg of sodium. That is the thin tomato reading. No Pee Dee light-tomato bottle's label was found on 2026-09-16, so the style's own state is unmeasured here. Sodium from the maker's panel; total sugars from USDA FoodData Central record 1996873, the maker's panel giving no sugars line. Every bottle we have read is on the sauce page.
Recipes you may use
Public-domain cookbooks are printed here in full, spelling and all. Where a recipe is still in copyright, the page gives the ingredients — a list of what goes in is a fact — and links to the rest.
Eastern North Carolina Barbecue Sauce
- ¾ gallons apple cider vinegar
- ⅛ cup salt
- ¼ cup ground black pepper
- ¼ cup red pepper flakes
- 1 cup molasses
- 2 cups honey
Makes ¾ gallon.
The vinegar sauce before any ketchup goes in; a light-tomato sauce is this with enough ketchup to redden it.
Barbecue Sauce (Sweet)
- 1 cup tomato catsup (ketchup)
- ¾ cup cider vinegar
- 2–3 tablespoons mustard
- 3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1–2 teaspoons celery seed
- 3 tablespoons margarine
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- ¼ teaspoon red pepper
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon onion flakes
- Garlic powder or minced garlic to taste (optional)
A cup of ketchup to three quarters of a cup of cider vinegar: heavier than a Pee Dee light-tomato sauce, lighter than a Kansas City one.
Sauce for Barbecues (receipt 335)
The vinegar mop the tomato was later added to.
Not to be confused with
- Lexington dip — The same sauce; the state line is the tell, and the slaw — red slaw beside it means Lexington.
- heavy tomato sauce — Light tomato pours and soaks in; heavy tomato coats.
Its kin
Who points back
Sources
- Bottled Carolina barbecue sauce labels, 68 rows · link
- Barbecue in South Carolina — Wikipedia · link
- Barbecue sauce — Wikipedia · link
- South Carolina's Four Barbecue Sauces (Gwen Fowler) · link
- South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation & Tourism — the four barbecue sauce regions · link
- BBQ History (Lake E. High Jr.) · link
- Eastern Carolina BBQ Sauce — product page · link
- Midway BBQ — official site · link
- A History of South Carolina Barbeque — Lake E. High Jr., 2013
- Cookbook:Eastern North Carolina Barbecue Sauce — Wikibooks Cookbook · link
- Cookbook:Barbecue Sauce (Sweet) — Wikibooks Cookbook · link
- Mrs. Hill's New Cook-Book; or, Housekeeping Made Easy. A Practical System for Private Families, in Town and Country, Especially Adapted to the Southern States — Mrs. A. P. Hill (Annabella P. Hill), of Georgia, 1867 · link
Where it came from: Cited a source we name · Harvested pulled from an open dataset · Tradition what the tradition says, hedged · Inference this project's reasoning · Field somebody stood there. This record as JSON.