A new sauce tries to cut the mustard.

After South Carolina's barbecue baron cooked his own goose with political incorrectness, Joe King's mouth started watering. The president of Wilmington-based Carolina Treet Inc. knew his new mustard-based barbecue sauce would be heresy to Tar Heels, who debate the merits of a vinegar vs. tomato base with religious fervor, but he hopes to atone at the bank.

At stake is the estimated $4.9 million a year in sales Piggie Park Enterprises lost when owner Maurice Bessinger insisted on flying the Confederate flag over his West Columbia, S.C., restaurant and selling tracts suggesting slaves fared better here than they would have in Africa. The NAACP, already boy-cotting the state in an effort to remove the flag from the capitol -- it succeeded in getting it moved to the capital grounds last fall -- pressured supermarkets to drop Maurice's Gourmet BBQ Sauce.

Salisbury-based Food Lion Inc. decided the sauce had to go, as did Harris Teeter, Sam's Club, Wal-Mart, Bi-Lo, Publix, Winn-Dixie and Piggly Wiggly. By fall...