My dad asked for picante sauce at the store. I never heard the phrase, and asked if he meant salsa. He told me no, he meant picante sauce. He wanted Pace's picante sauce:
This was opposed to Pace's salsa:
Now I thought the first one was a "salsa", just a special type of salsa. However "salsa" doesn't appear anywhere on the jar. Furthermore on www.pacefoods.com, there is a distinction between salsa and picante sauce. This led me to believe that "picante sauce" is NOT a type of "salsa".
If translated literally to Spanish, "picante sauce" just means "spicy sauce" and "salsa" just means "sauce".
So technically speaking; ketchup, barbecue sauce, A1, ranch dressing and Tobasco are ALL salsas. However if you ask me to buy some salsa you obviously don't mean A1.
According to http://www.ehow.com/facts_5770035_difference-between-salsa-picante-sauce_.html:
While the two terms are commonly used interchangeably in English, they are not synonymous, because picante sauce is a specific type of salsa.
So picante sauce IS salsa according to this website, however there is a contradiction because it says:
Picante sauce, on the other hand, has one distinguishing characteristic that sets its apart -- its intense heat.
Pace (who apparently was the inventor of picante sauce) sells mild, medium and spicy picante sauces along with salsas.
I know the stuff inside the jar that says "picante sauce" has a different texture and tastes different than the stuff inside the jar that says "salsa", so I'm not really asking what the actual culinary differences are. I know those. I'm asking about a definition.
Are "picante sauces" a subset of "salsas"? Does a tomato based sauce have to be spicy to be "picante"?