What do you call barbecue sauce that’s good enough to drink? Carolina barbecue enthusiasts will tell you it’s, without a doubt, Carolina Gold—a viscous, sweet-and-tangy mustard-based sauce that’s singular to the Lowcountry of South Carolina.
Speculators suggest that Carolina Gold sauce came from German culinary influences where South Carolina borders on Georgia—after all, German cuisine is known for its combinations of smoky meat and sausage, not unlike Southern pulled pork, with mustard—but food historians suggest that this mustardy sauce’s origins aren’t so easy to nail down.
It turns out that the recipe might be traced to just a few specific whole-hog roasts in the area, each with their own traditions and mustard-based barbecue sauce recipes. Called “Southern Gold,” “Original Golden,” or “Carolina Gold,” these sauces all shared one common base ingredient: mustard. Like Eastern North Carolina barbecue sauce, Carolina Gold is softened by brown sugar and brightened by a quintessential vinegary tang…