A dip or dipping sauce is a common condiment for many types of food. Dips are used to add flavor or texture to a food, such as pita bread, dumplings, crackers, chopped raw vegetables, fruits, seafood, cubed pieces of meat and cheese, potato chips, tortilla chips, falafel, and sometimes even whole sandwiches in the case of jus. Unlike other sauces, instead of applying the sauce to the food, the food is typically placed or dipped into the sauce. Dips are commonly used for finger foods, appetizers, and other food types. Thick dips based on sour cream, crème fraîche, milk, yogurt, mayonnaise, soft cheese, or beans are a staple of American hors d'oeuvres and are thicker than spreads, which can be thinned to make dips. Celebrity chef Alton Brown suggests that a dip is defined based on its ability to "maintain contact with its transport mechanism over of white carpet". Dips in various forms are eaten all over the world and people have been using sauces for dipping for thousands of years. List of dips Some types of dip include: Ajika, a spicy, subtly flavoured dip in Caucasian cuisine, based on hot red pepper, garlic, herbs and spices Ajvar, made from red bell peppers with garlic, found in Bosnian cuisine and Serbian cuisine Artichoke dip Baba ghanoush, a dip made from eggplant, popular in the Eastern Mediterranean and parts of South Asia Bagna càuda, a regional dish of the Italian Piedmont Banana ketchup, a Filipino condiment made from bananas; used similar to tomato ketchup Barbecue sauce, often used for grilled and fried meats in the United States Bean dip, dip made from refried beans Blue cheese dressing, commonly used as a dip for raw vegetables or buffalo wings Buffalo sauce, often used as both a coating for buffalo wings as well as a standalone dipping sauce for other foods Cheese sauce Chile con queso, used in Tex Mex cuisine with tortilla chips Chili oil, used as a dipping sauce for meat and dim sum Chimichurri, a dip from Argentina made of parsley, garlic, and oregano Chocolate, a dip for various fruits, doughnuts, profiteroles and marshmallows Chutney, used with snacks like deep fried samosas and pakoras, dosa and idli Clam dip, a kind of condiment for dipping crackers and chips Cocktail sauce, a dip for seafood made from ketchup or chili sauce and horseradish Comeback sauce, a dip for chicken fingers made