Comeback Sauce: The Mississippi Dressing You Should Try ASAP

Everyone loves a secret sauce — never mind the fact that they're hardly ever actually a secret. Practically every fast food special sauce is the same thing, basically a spin on Thousand Island dressing. However, plenty of lesser-known regional condiments have managed to retain some air of mystery, like Utah fry sauce or Washington D.C.'s mambo sauce. Then there's the secret sauce from the American South that has been winning hearts for more than a century: comeback sauce.

Since first emerging from the kitchens of Greek restaurants in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 20th century, comeback sauce has remained mostly isolated to southern states. Like fast food special sauce, its main ingredients are ketchup and mayonnaise, but the other components can vary. Comeback sauce usually includes a spicy ingredient like chile or hot sauce, and depending on the restaurant making it, it may also be seasoned with garlic, onions, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, or smoked paprika.

The end result is something between a Thousand Island dressing and Louisiana-style remoulade. If we're talking Chick-fil-A Sauce vs Raising Cane's sauce, comeback sauce is decidedly in the latter camp. In fact, Cane's sauce may be the closest thing to comeback sauce available from a national chain. Like all good secret sauces, comeback sauce is versatile. It's often used as a dipping sauce for fries and chicken strips, but in its original preparation, it was actually a salad dressing.

Comeback sauce traces its origins to the 1920s, when Mississippi and Alabama saw a large influx of Greek immigrants drawn to the mining and steel industries. When those industries failed to live up to their promise, many Greek immigrants opted to open restaurants, turning cities like Birmingham and Jackson into hotspots for Greek cuisine. The first Greek restaurant in Jackson was called The Rotisserie, opened by Greek restaurateur Alex Dennery. Dennery created a house dressing to serve with salads that he called "Kum-Bak" sauce. The name alluded to the fact that the dressing was so good people couldn't help but "come back" for more.

There is a competing origin story, which claims that comeback sauce was invented at a different Greek restaurant called the Mayflower Cafe, which is still in business. Opened in 1935, the Mayflower is the oldest operating restaurant in the city of Jackson. Their comeback sauce is the stuff of local legend, but it isn't the original. In an interview with the Clarion-Ledger, the Mayflower Cafe's owner disavowed the legend, and affirmed that The Rotisserie is the true birthplace of comeback sauce. A hundred years later, the original intention has changed from a salad dressing to an all-purpose sauce and dip, but the enduring popularity shows that comeback sauce truly lives up to its name.