a sauceMelvin's Golden Sauce

also: Melvin's Original Golden Secret · Golden Secret Sauce

The Golden, at Melvin's counters in Charleston and Mount Pleasant.

The mustard sauce of Melvin's Bar-B-Que in Charleston, sold in 16-ounce glass bottles, half gallons and gallons, beside the house's Southern Red, Sweet Red and Vinegar sauces. The maker publishes no ingredient list and no Nutrition Facts for any of the four, so what this page can give is the history the family tells and the shape of its line, not a measurement.

The story Cited · web-melvinsbbq-golden

The maker's account dates the sauce to 1933 and to Melvin Bessinger's father, Joe Bessinger — Big Joe on the bottle's copy — and says the recipe passed down spoken and was never written. Joe Bessinger's mustard sauce at Holly Hill is the same sauce the mustard record carries as the Midlands origin story, and his sons carried it out of the Midlands in four directions: Maurice to West Columbia, Melvin and Thomas to Charleston, Robert to Charleston too.

The present line is four sauces and reads as a map of the whole subject. Golden is the family mustard. Southern Red the house calls a tangy tomato sauce blending vinegar and tomato. Sweet Red the current owner describes as a Kansas City style he worked out in his own kitchen. Vinegar, the newest, the house says its pitmaster made for the owner's wife, who grew up in North Carolina on vinegar barbecue. Inference — a Charleston counter selling all four is not unusual now; what is unusual is that it sells them as four named things rather than as one house sauce.

Facts

base	mustard
styles	South Carolina mustard barbecue
region	The Lowcountry, South Carolina
links	Melvin's BBQ — Golden Sauce · Melvin's BBQ — Our Story
confidence	medium · needs verification · updated 2026-09-16

On the label

what was read	bottle · Melvin's BBQ, Charleston, SC
vinegar	?
tomato	?
mustard	?
sugar	?

Read from this page, 2026-09-16. Nothing measured. The maker's product page, read 2026-09-16, gives the 1933 date and the Bessinger attribution and prints no ingredient list and no Nutrition Facts; the same is true of the house's other three sauces. The base is the sauce's name and the family's account, not a reading of an ingredient order. 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.

Sauce for Barbecues (receipt 335)

Mrs. A. P. Hill · Mrs. Hill's New Cook-Book · 1867 · p. 171 · source · Public domain

Melt half a pound of butter; stir into it a large tablespoonful of mustard, half a teaspoonful of red pepper, one of black, salt to taste; add vinegar until the sauce has a strong acid taste. The quantity of vinegar will depend upon the strength of it. As soon as the meat becomes hot, begin to baste, and continue basting frequently until it is done; pour over the meat any sauce that remains.

Mustard, vinegar, butter and pepper, written out in 1867. The maker's own formula is not published; these are free-to-use recipes of the same family, for a cook who wants to make a jar.

Savory Mustard Sauce

Wikibooks Cookbook · read 16 September 2026 · source · CC BY-SA 4.0

½ cup Dijon mustard
¼ cup chicken broth
1 ¼ tsp cornstarch
1 pinch of salt
¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
1 shallot, very finely minced
3 tbsp unsalted butter, divided

1. Heat olive oil in a large slope-sided skillet over medium high heat. Add shallot and sauté until golden. 2. Meanwhile, combine broth and starch. Set aside. 3. Once shallot has cooked, add mustard, salt, and pepper to pan. Decrease heat to medium low heat. 4. Once sauce heats to just below a simmer, add broth mixture. Cook, whisking continuously, until sauce thickens slightly. 5. Whisk in butter 1 tbsp at a time, waiting for the one before it to fully melt before adding another. 6. Once all butter has been used, remove sauce from heat. 7. Serve with a steak or some pork tenderloin, or use as a grilling baste.

Not to be confused with

Maurice's Southern Gold — Two brothers, one father's mustard recipe. Melvin's Golden is sold from Charleston, Maurice's Southern Gold from West Columbia.

Its kin

saucesmustard-based barbecue saucethe sauce its Golden bottle is, and the record that carries the Bessinger family's part in it.stylesSouth Carolina mustard barbecuethe Midlands style a Lowcountry counter sells, four generations out from Holly Hill.peopleJoe Bessingerthe father the maker's page credits the 1933 recipe to.placesMelvin's Legendary Bar-B-Quethe Charleston restaurant the sauce is made for.saucesMaurice's Southern Goldthe brother's bottle, from the same father's recipe, sold as Southern Gold at West Columbia.saucesheavy tomato saucewhat the house's Sweet Red bottle is, by the owner's own description.saucesvinegar-and-pepper saucewhat the house's newest bottle reaches for, made for a North Carolinian at a Charleston counter.

Sources

Melvin's BBQ Golden Sauce — product page · link
Our Story — Melvin's BBQ · link
Melvin's Legendary Bar-B-Q — David Bessinger, interviewed by Rien Fertel, June 26, 2012 · link
South Carolina's Four Barbecue Sauces (Gwen Fowler) · link
Bottled Carolina barbecue sauce labels, 68 rows · 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
Cookbook:Savory Mustard Sauce — Wikibooks Cookbook · 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.

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