Wholesale Copper Gravy Boats and Sauce Dishes

Copper gravy boats in this range are small tin-lined sauce dishes holding 60 ml to 140 ml, measuring 9 cm to 14 cm across and 3.5 cm to 4.5 cm deep. They are individual-portion vessels rather than the shared table boat used for a roast, and that difference decides how many you order and how much washing they create.

What these dishes are, and how they differ from a Western gravy boat

Western gravy boats are shared, jug-shaped vessels with a formed pouring lip and often a saucer, typically holding between a quarter and half a litre. The copper dishes in this range are shallow handled bowls holding 60 ml to 140 ml, made to arrive on a plate rather than to be passed around a table.

This is the first thing to establish because the English search term and the physical object do not line up, and a buyer who orders on the phrase alone will be surprised by the crate. People type copper gravy boat, copper gravy jug, copper gravy pot and copper sauce boat, and most of them are picturing the Sunday-roast vessel: a boat with a spout, a handle at one end, a foot or a stand, enough capacity for four people to help themselves twice. That object exists. It is not what these are.

What these are is the Turkish sosluk: a small round or slightly oval dish, shallow, with a handle riveted or welded to one side, made to hold one person’s sauce. In Turkish service it arrives with the plate. On a meze table several of them arrive together, each with a different sauce. In a grill house it is the vessel for a garlic yoghurt or a chilli paste. In a hotel breakfast it holds honey, clotted cream or a compote. The shape descends from the sahan, the handled dish that goes straight from a small flame to the table, and the family resemblance is why the heavier examples in the range are genuinely sauce pans rather than tableware.

So there are two honest answers to the search term. If you want individual-portion service, this is exactly the right product and the rest of this page is about ordering it properly. If you want a shared boat for a roast, this is not it, and we would rather say so here than after you have paid for freight. A larger vessel with a formed lip can be produced to drawing at the workshop we work with when the quantity justifies it, and that is a different conversation with a different timetable, described on our custom manufacturing page.

Capacity: what 60 ml and 140 ml actually look like

60 ml is roughly four tablespoons, or two fluid ounces; 140 ml is a little under five fluid ounces, or about half a US cup. Across the range the dishes measure 9 cm to 14 cm in diameter but only 3.5 cm to 4.5 cm deep, so they read as wide and shallow rather than as jugs.

Numbers on a specification sheet are abstract, so it is worth converting them into service. Sixty millilitres is a proper single portion of a thick sauce: a garlic yoghurt beside a kebab, an aioli with fried potatoes, a chilli oil, a dipping sauce for a starter. It is not enough for a thin gravy poured over a plate of food, and it is nowhere near enough for four people to share.

A hundred and forty millilitres is a generous single portion or a modest shared one for two. It will take a compote for a breakfast table, a tahini sauce for a meze board, or a warm butter sauce for a grilled fish. If your service involves one sauce reaching two people, this is the band to look at.

The shallowness matters as much as the volume and gets overlooked. At 3.5 cm to 4.5 cm deep with a 14 cm mouth, these dishes present the sauce rather than conceal it, which is the point in a photograph-driven dining room and a problem on a crowded plate. Wide dishes eat plate space. Before ordering the largest diameter, put a 14 cm circle on the plate you actually use and look at what is left.

Depth also decides what will not work. A wide shallow dish carrying a thin liquid will slop on a moving tray, which is an argument for the lidded form or for smaller diameters in a room where the walk from the pass to the table is long. A thick sauce behaves perfectly at any of these dimensions.

The portion arithmetic: how many dishes a service actually needs

Individual sauce service multiplies the number of vessels by covers, not by tables. A room serving sixty covers with one sauce each needs sixty dishes in circulation, plus whatever is in the wash at that moment, plus a spare margin — against roughly fifteen shared vessels for the same room at a table of four.

This is the single calculation that decides whether a copper sauce dish programme is a pleasure or a running sore, and almost nobody does it before the first order. Work it in four steps with your own figures rather than ours.

First, count covers at peak, not average. The number that matters is the busiest hour of the busiest day, because that is when you run out. Second, count sauces per cover. One dipping sauce is one; a meze presentation with three condiments per guest is three, and this is where the total gets away from people. Multiply those two and you have dishes in simultaneous use.

Third, decide your wash cycle. If dishes go back to the kitchen and are hand washed during service, you need roughly the peak figure plus the number that are in the sink at any moment. If they are washed after service, you need the whole evening’s throughput, which for two sittings is double the peak. Fourth, add a margin for dents, dishes that have gone missing and the batch that is out for re-tinning years from now. Buying that margin with the original order is far cheaper than a top-up shipment, and it means the spares match the originals rather than being a slightly different production run.

Then do the comparison honestly, because it may change the decision. The same room served with one shared vessel per table needs a quarter of the pieces for a table of four. Individual dishes look better, control portion cost precisely, and remove the hygiene question of a shared vessel; shared vessels cost a fraction to buy and a fraction to wash. There is no universal right answer, and a supplier who does not put the comparison in front of you is simply hoping you order the larger quantity.

The washing-up arithmetic: what individual service costs in labour

Copper is hand washed, so every sauce dish is a separate manual item rather than something a machine absorbs. A room serving several hundred individual portions a day is adding hundreds of hand-wash operations to the shift, and that labour is the real running cost of the category.

We are not going to invent a number of seconds per dish, because it depends on your sink, your staff and how long the sauce has been sitting. What we will do is tell you how to get your own figure, which is worth more. Time a member of staff washing, rinsing and drying ten dishes properly and divide. Multiply by the daily throughput you calculated in the previous section. That result, in minutes per day, is the number to put next to the purchase price before you decide.

Three things make it worse and all three are avoidable. Sauce left to dry in the dish doubles the work, so dirty dishes want a soak in warm water on the way back rather than a stack on a shelf. Scouring pads scratch the tin lining and slow every subsequent wash, because a scratched surface holds residue. And air-drying leaves water marks on copper that are harder to remove than the food was, so drying is part of the operation rather than an optional extra.

The honest alternatives deserve a hearing. Fewer, larger vessels cut the count immediately. A mixed approach — copper for the dishes that reach the guest and a plain vessel behind the pass — keeps the visual benefit without the volume. Or you accept the labour deliberately because the presentation is the product, which is a perfectly good reason and the one most of our hospitality buyers actually give. What does not work is adopting individual copper service without anybody having counted, which ends with the dishes quietly retired to a shelf after a month.

Pouring, spooning and the drip problem

Most dishes in this range are round bowls without a formed pouring lip, so the sauce is spooned or the dish is set down rather than poured. Where a lip does exist, the detail that matters is whether it is properly formed: an unfinished edge lets sauce run back down the outside of the vessel.

The dripping gravy boat is one of the oldest complaints in tableware and it has a mechanical cause. A liquid leaving a lip will cling to the underside and run back along it unless the edge is thin enough, sharp enough or turned outward enough to break the surface tension. A rolled rim with no defined spout, which is what a round sauce dish has, does not attempt the trick at all — which is why the dish is designed to be spooned from rather than poured.

Decide which behaviour your service needs before you choose a form. If the sauce is thick and the guest dips, a round dish is exactly right and the question never arises. If a waiter will pour a thin sauce over a plate at the table, you need a formed lip and you need to test it: fill a sample with water and pour slowly, at the speed a nervous waiter actually pours, and watch the outside of the vessel. Fast pours look fine on almost anything; slow pours reveal everything.

If your service genuinely requires a poured, thin sauce in volume, be honest with yourself that this range is not built for it. A larger vessel with a properly formed lip can be made to drawing, a sample is approved before any series begins, and the pour test is the acceptance criterion we would write into that sample approval.

Handles: brass, wood and what each asks of a kitchen

Sauce dishes in this range carry either a brass handle or a wooden one. Brass is durable, dishwasher-irrelevant since the pieces are hand washed anyway, and conducts heat from a warm dish to the fingers; wood stays cool and comfortable but must never be soaked or left wet.

Brass is the traditional pairing and the one that survives a commercial room. It is a copper alloy, it is yellow against the red of the body, it takes knocks without splitting and it can be polished back when it dulls. Its single drawback is conduction: if the dish has been filled with something hot or has sat near a flame, a brass handle will be warm to hold. In service that is usually manageable and sometimes it is the point, since it tells staff the dish is hot.

Wood is the comfortable option and the more demanding one in terms of care. It stays cool, it reads as rustic in a styled room, and it feels good in the hand. What it will not tolerate is soaking, standing in a wet sink or repeated cycles of wetting and drying without attention. A wooden handle that has been treated as though it were metal will grey, raise its grain and eventually loosen at the fixing. If your dishwashing routine is a queue of items sitting in water, order brass.

Whichever material, the fixing is the part to inspect on a sample. A handle is a joint, and a joint on a vessel that is handled hundreds of times a week is the part that fails first. Look at how it is attached to the body, put a firm twisting load on it with the dish full of water, and ask whether a loose handle can be re-fixed or whether the dish becomes scrap. That question is worth asking of any supplier, and the answer tells you a lot.

Lidded and open forms

The range includes an open handled dish and a lidded form at the larger diameter. A lid slows cooling on the walk from the pass to the table, keeps a sauce covered on a buffet, and makes a dish stackable on a tray; it also adds a separate item to wash and to keep matched with its body.

The open dish is the default and the easier operation. Nothing to lose, nothing to mismatch, and the sauce is visible, which is often the whole reason it arrived in copper rather than in a ramekin. It is the right choice for plated service where the dish travels a short distance and is set down immediately.

The lidded form earns its keep in three situations. A long walk from the kitchen, where anything uncovered arrives cooler and dustier than it left. A buffet or breakfast display, where covering is often a requirement rather than a preference. And room service, where a lid is the difference between a tray that presents well and one that arrives looking tired.

The costs are real and worth naming. A lid is a second piece to wash, a second piece to store and a piece that goes missing on its own; venues that adopt lidded service usually end up ordering spare lids separately within the first year, and it is cheaper to anticipate that at the original order. Lids also have to be matched to bodies from the same production run if the fit is to be consistent, which is another argument for keeping the approved sample and the written specification on file.

Sheet gauge and weight, and why the range is so wide

Sheet thickness across these dishes runs from about 0.5 mm to 1.85 mm and weight from roughly 98 grams to 650 grams. That spread is not inconsistency; it separates light tableware that only ever holds a cold or warm sauce from heavier bodies that are genuinely small pans and can sit over a flame.

At the light end, half a millimetre of sheet is plenty. The dish carries a portion of sauce from a pass to a plate, it never meets direct heat, and every gram saved is a gram a member of staff is not carrying on a tray all evening. A light dish is also cheaper to freight, which matters when the pieces are small and numerous.

At the heavy end, close to two millimetres, you have a different object. That mass exists so the body can sit on a burner without hot-spotting and so the temperature does not collapse the moment cold ingredients go in. These are the sahan-descended bodies, the ones the catalogue describes as sauce pans, and they are bought by kitchens that finish a sauce in the same vessel it is served in.

A word on hobs, since the heavier bodies invite the question. They work on gas, on electric coil and on ceramic. They do not work on induction, because copper is not ferromagnetic and an induction hob has nothing to grip; an interface disc can bridge the gap at the cost of most of copper’s responsiveness. If your kitchen is induction throughout, these dishes still work perfectly as service vessels filled from a pan elsewhere, and we would steer you that way rather than sell you a disc. The whole question is worked through on our copper and induction page.

When you compare quotations, ask which gauge each one is priced on. Thickness is invisible in a photograph and it is the single easiest place for a price to be reduced without anybody noticing until the rims start deforming in the crate.

Tin lining and acidic sauces

Every interior surface of these dishes is tin-lined, because sauces are among the most acidic things a kitchen produces. Tomato, lemon, vinegar, pomegranate molasses and yoghurt all react with bare copper, and the lining is what keeps the sauce and the metal apart.

This is not a refinement and it is not negotiable in what we supply. Copper is chemically active; an acidic liquid in prolonged contact with it will dissolve a measurable amount of copper, and a sauce dish is precisely the vessel in which an acidic liquid sits. The framework that governs this in the European Union is Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004, with the technical reference for metals published by the EDQM at the Council of Europe; in the United States the relevant rule sits in the FDA Food Code and restricts copper in contact with food below pH 6. The full picture, including which certificates exist and which do not, is on our food contact compliance page.

Tin is a soft metal with a low melting point, around 232 degrees Celsius according to the Royal Society of Chemistry. For the heavier sauce pans that means a real operational limit: an empty dish left over a high flame will reach that temperature, and the lining will blister. Fill the vessel before it goes on the heat and keep the flame moderate. For the light service dishes the limit never comes into play.

A lining wears rather than fails suddenly, and it is renewed when copper begins to show through across the base and lower walls rather than at a single mark on the rim. We keep the original specification on file so a replacement batch matches what you already own, and the arithmetic behind renewing, rotating or replacing is set out on our copper lifespan page.

On documentation we say what we hold and no more. We do not hold a laboratory test report for these bodies. If your market or your client requires migration testing, tell us before the order so it can be arranged in advance, because it changes both the specification and the timetable, and discovering the requirement at the border is a far more expensive way to learn it.

Finish: why this range is red copper

The sauce dishes in the current range are supplied in red copper rather than in the four finishes offered across the rest of the catalogue. That is a range fact rather than a rule, and oxide, brushed or nickel exteriors on this body are a made-to-order conversation rather than something to pick from a list.

It is worth stating plainly because buyers assembling a matched table will assume otherwise. If you are ordering dishes to sit alongside trays, bowls or drinkware in antique oxide, the sauce dishes will not match out of the box, and you will find that out on delivery unless somebody says it first. There are two ways round it: specify the finish as part of a made-to-order run when the quantity justifies it, or accept the contrast deliberately and make the bright dish a highlight against darker serveware, which several venues do on purpose.

Bright red copper on a small object that is handled constantly behaves the way bright copper always does. It reacts with air and darkens; hands, heat and acidic splashes accelerate it unevenly. On a dish that is washed after every use, the surface stays brighter than it would on a display piece, but nobody should order these expecting a factory finish in month six without a polishing routine. That is not a defect and most kitchens come to prefer the lived-in surface; it simply needs to be a decision rather than a surprise.

Buying in quantity: packing, marking and spares

Small dishes ship in high piece counts and low weights, which makes packing the main variable in what arrives. Bare copper nested against bare copper marks itself, so dishes travel separated, and spares ordered with the original run match it in a way a later top-up shipment will not.

There is no published minimum order figure and that is deliberate rather than evasive. One diameter in one form and a mixed list of open dishes, lidded dishes and sauce pans are different problems for a workshop, and any single number printed here would be wrong for most of what we carry. Send the list with quantities and a destination country and we will say immediately whether it works as an export shipment.

Packing is where this category is won or lost. These pieces nest, and nesting is exactly what marks them; they travel with inserts between them, boxed at stack heights one person can lift, cornered and palletised. Handles need to be restrained so they do not work against the body of the dish below during transit, and wooden handles want protection from moisture in the container. Carton dimensions and gross weights go out with the quotation so your forwarder can quote against real figures rather than estimates, and so you can compare landed cost properly instead of comparing unit prices.

Marking works on the underside of the base, which on a dish this shallow is the only surface a guest never sees. Hand engraving suits a crest; laser marking suits a fine logo or a run of inventory codes. Send vector artwork and placement is confirmed on a sample before a run starts. On customs, copper household articles of this kind sit in Chapter 74 of the Harmonized System under heading 7418, but classification responsibility belongs to the importer and their broker and we will not pretend otherwise; the export documentation on the Turkish side is prepared here and quoted as a service, and the declaration in the destination country stays with the importer because only a party established there can make it. The detail is on our importing page.

Care

Copper sauce dishes are washed by hand in warm water with a mild detergent, dried immediately and never scoured or put through a commercial dishwasher. Sauce is rinsed off rather than left to dry in the dish, and wooden handles are wiped rather than soaked.

The routine is short and the discipline is the whole of it. Rinse on the way back to the sink, wash by hand, dry at once with a soft cloth, store dry and not stacked wet. Scouring pads scratch the tin lining, and a scratched lining holds residue and makes every future wash slower, so a soft cloth or a soft sponge is not a preference but a maintenance decision.

Machine washing is the one we are asked about most and the answer does not move. Machine detergent is alkaline and aggressive towards both the lining and the copper, the hot cycle is unkind to soft tin, and the drying phase spots the exterior. We neither recommend a dishwasher nor claim the pieces survive one. For a kitchen that racks everything by reflex, this is an operational decision to make before the order rather than after, and it is the single most common reason a copper programme is quietly abandoned.

Darkening on the outside is not damage. Either polish on a schedule and keep the set uniform, or let it age and accept an even, lived-in surface. The full routine, including what a copper polish does and what the traditional lemon-and-salt method is good for, is on our copper care page.

How we work

BakırBul works through a long-term production partnership rather than a plant of its own. We specify the piece, our partner produces it, and we carry it under our own name, check it in our own warehouse and ship it from there. Capacities and forms outside the standard range are made to drawing.

Copper is selected from the workshops of Kahramanmaraş and other Anatolian copper towns, brought into our own warehouse, checked against the order and shipped from there. Two things follow and both favour the buyer. Because we specify rather than resell whatever a catalogue happens to contain, a repeat order can be matched against what you received last time, which matters enormously in a category where the spares arrive years after the original run. And because checking happens in our own warehouse before a shipment leaves, the rejects are ours rather than yours.

Where a form does not exist — a larger capacity, a properly formed pouring lip, a matched saucer, a different handle material — new work is made to drawing at the workshop we work with when the quantity justifies it, and a physical sample is approved before a series begins. Keep that sample. It is what a top-up order is measured against in year three, and it costs almost nothing to retain at the start. What we will not do is copy a design that belongs to somebody else, and any surface intended to meet food is tinned rather than left bare.

Request a quotation

Send the capacity you need, the handle material, whether you want the lidded form, an approximate quantity and a destination country, and say how many covers you serve and how many sauces reach each one. That is enough for a price, a realistic timetable and an honest opinion on whether the count is right.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a copper gravy boat in this range hold?

Between 60 ml and 140 ml, which is roughly four tablespoons at the small end and a little under five fluid ounces at the large end. The dishes are 9 cm to 14 cm across and only 3.5 cm to 4.5 cm deep. That is individual-portion capacity. A shared table boat for a roast is usually somewhere between a quarter and half a litre, so if that is what you are picturing, this range is smaller than you expect.

Is this a real gravy boat or a sauce dish?

Honestly, it is a sauce dish. The Turkish sosluk is a shallow handled bowl made to hold one person’s sauce and to arrive with the plate; it does not have the jug profile or the capacity of a Western gravy boat. We use the English term because it is what buyers search for, and then we tell them the difference on the first screen rather than on delivery.

How many do I need for my restaurant?

Multiply covers at peak by sauces per cover, then add whatever is in the wash at any moment and a margin for dents and losses. Individual service scales with covers rather than with tables, so sixty covers with one sauce each is sixty dishes in circulation, not fifteen. Buy the spare margin with the original run, because a later top-up will not match a production run from years earlier.

Can they go in a dishwasher?

We do not recommend it and we do not claim it. Machine detergent is alkaline and aggressive towards both the tin lining and the copper, the hot cycle is unkind to soft tin and the drying phase leaves water marks. Because copper is hand washed, small dishes are the most labour-intensive item a kitchen can adopt, and that labour should be counted before the order rather than discovered after it.

Do they drip when you pour?

Most of them are round bowls without a formed pouring lip, so they are designed to be spooned from or set down rather than poured. If your service needs a poured thin sauce, ask for a formed lip and test it on a sample: fill it with water and pour slowly, at the speed a nervous waiter pours, watching the outside of the vessel. Fast pours flatter everything; slow pours reveal the truth.

Are the dishes lined inside?

Yes, every interior surface is tin-lined, and that is not optional. Sauces are among the most acidic things a kitchen makes — tomato, lemon, vinegar, pomegranate molasses, yoghurt — and bare copper reacts with all of them. A properly specified dish has a soft, slightly cloudy silver interior rather than a red one. A red interior means no lining, and that is a decorative object rather than a sauce dish.

Can I use them on the hob?

The heavier bodies, yes: they are genuinely small sauce pans and work on gas, electric coil and ceramic. They do not work on induction, because copper is not ferromagnetic; if your kitchen is induction throughout, use them as service vessels filled from a pan elsewhere rather than buying an interface disc. Fill the dish before it goes on the heat and keep the flame moderate, because an empty lined vessel over a high flame will blister its tin.

Which handle should I choose, brass or wood?

Brass if the dishes will be washed in a busy commercial sink, because it tolerates soaking, knocks and repeated wetting, and it can be polished back. Wood if comfort and appearance matter more and somebody will wipe rather than soak it; wood stays cool in the hand but greys and loosens if it is left standing in water. Whichever you pick, load-test the fixing on a sample before you commit.

Why are they only in red copper?

That is what the current range carries, rather than a rule about the product. If you are building a matched table in antique oxide or brushed matt, the sauce dishes will not match out of the box. Either specify the finish as part of a made-to-order run when the quantity justifies it, or use the bright dish deliberately as a highlight against darker serveware, which a number of venues do on purpose.

Do you have a minimum order?

There is no published figure, and that is deliberate rather than evasive. One diameter in one form and a mixed list of open dishes, lidded dishes and sauce pans are different problems for a workshop, and any single number would be wrong for most of what we carry. Send the list with quantities and a destination country and we will tell you straight away whether it works as an export shipment.

The 2026 catalogue — the full range with codes, sizes and weights: open or download it here. For trays, plates, pitchers and bowls see copper serveware, for pots, pans and oven bodies see copper cookware, and if you are furnishing a property see copper for restaurants and hotels. More background reading sits in our resource library.

Last updated: 20 September 2026