Sauce (pronounced saws)
(1) Any preparation, now presented almost always as a liquid
or semi-liquid, added in a variety of way to food to enhance (sometimes
disguise) the taste or accentuate the texture.
(2) Stewed fruit, often puréed and served as an
accompaniment to meat, dessert, or other food (always with a modifier: apple
sauce, cranberry sauce et al).
(3) Figuratively, to make poignant; to give zest, flavor
or interest to; to set off; to vary and render attractive.
(4) In informal use, (usually as saucy or sauciness), impertinence;
impudence, defiant cheekiness etc.
(5) In the slang of bodybuilding, anabolic steroids or
compounds with similar effects.
(6) In the slang of drug users, a variety of substances,
usually those taken in liquid form.
(7) In slang (usually as “the sauce” or “on the sauce”)
alcoholic drink.
(8) In slang as “the sauce” or “secret sauce”, some additive
or attribute which imparts to someone or something a particular vitality or capability.
(9) In slang, to send or hand over (now rare).
(10) In the slang of the internet, an alternative form of
source, often used when requesting the source of an image or other posted
material (a use mysterious to those over a certain age).
(11) In art, a soft crayon for use in stump drawing or in
shading with the stump.
(12) Garden vegetables eaten with meat (archaic and effectively
extinct although examples have been cited in “retro” menus).
(13) To dress or prepare with sauce (historically also as
“to season”.
(14) To make a sauce of (fruits, vegetables etc).
(15) To give piquance or zest to something (not
necessarily something edible); To cause to relish anything, as if with a sauce;
to tickle or gratify, as the palate; to please; to stimulate.
(16) To make something more agreeable or seem less harsh
(often as “sauced up” or “sauce it up”).
1300–1350: From the Middle English, from the Middle
French, from the Old French sauce, sausse
& sause, from the Vulgar Latin salsa (things salted, salt food), noun
use of feminine of the Latin salsus (salted),
the past participle of sallere (to
sprinkle with salt), from sāl (genitive salis),
from the primitive Indo-European root sal-(salt). The spelling sawce is obsolete. Sauce is
a noun & verb, sauced & saucing are verbs and oversauced & sauceless
are adjectives; the noun plural is sauces.
A pasta sauce said to be hand-made using artisanal techniques, it contains vine-ripened tomatoes, white truffle and edible gold flakes. Offered only in a one-off limited-edition and supplied in a hand-crafted wooden box, the RRP (recommended retail price) was US$1000 per jar.
The original use of "sauce" was to describe the food condiment and until the
early eighteenth century the spellings sawce
& salse remained common in
English, reflecting the influence of French cookery terms. The seemingly mysterious seventeenth century use
of sauce to mean “garden vegetables or roots” was a clipping of “garden-sauce”,
the idea being that like a liquid sauce, the vegetables worked as a condiment
to the meat. From the late fourteenth
century, it was used to describe “a curative preparation, medicinal salt”,
referencing also the use in Antiquity to use (salsa) salt to preserve food. The figurative meaning “something which adds
piquancy to words or actions” was in use by the early sixteenth century while
the sense of “impertinence” was first recorded in 1835 although etymologists
note the connection of ideas in it is much older. The use related to liquor (“back on the sauce”
etc)" emerged during World War II (1939-1945). The figurative phrase “serued with the same sauce” (subject to the same kind of usage) was
in use by the 1520s while the more enduring “what’s sauce of the goose is sauce for the gander” (one who treats
others in a certain way should not complain about receiving the same treatment)
was first recorded in the 1670s. William
Shakespeare (1564–1616) used “saucy” to indicate a character’s was hot-tempered
or impetuous, such as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (1597) or Katherina in The
Taming of the Shrew (1592). That use
persists but “saucy” is now used also (of women) to suggest a quality of a
confident sexiness.
The title of "world's hottest sauce" is often contested and chilli breeders are always working to create ever more aggressive peppers. Blended with a measure of the over-proof dark rum once distilled for the Royal Navy, given the arms race in the field, whether it's still the hottest is doubtful but it apparently remains the most expensive yet advertised at US$500 per bottle. Unfortunately, it's now sold out so doubtlessly a foodie collectors' item.
In idiomatic use, the now archaic Australian phrase “fair shake of the sauce bottle” was a
complaint that one’s fish & chips, meat pie or whatever hadn’t been
provided with enough tomato sauce, a cultural comment of some historic
significance given the stuff’s role as the nation’s standard all-purpose additive. The phrase fell from use and is remembered
only by the boomer generation and their seniors but it garnered some brief
attention when in a television interview Dr Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian
prime-minister 2007-2010 & 2013) used “fair
suck of the sauce bottle”, a variant of “fair suck of the sav”, the idea of that the echo of a complaint once
heard from children who believed their sibling might be taking more than their
fair portion of a shared saveloy (a type of sausage which in Australia is
something like a bigger and more seasoned frankfurter). The word was a corruption of cervelat (Swiss smoked beef or pork
sausage) or the French cervelas (a thick,
short sausage) and the name is probably in some way connected with the region
of Savoy (which, with border changes, now straddles areas in Italy, France
& Switzerland). Sucking from a sauce
bottle is a vivid image, especially if it contains something like chilli sauce.
Quite how many varieties of sauce now exist or have existed isn’t known but it is certainly at least in the hundreds. The classes include generic indications of use (fish sauce), color (pink sauce), alleged history (admiral's sauce), content (mint sauce), the manufacturer’s name (HP sauce), built in advertising (awesome sauce), identifier or warning (hot sauce), regionalism (Prussian sauce), occasion (coronation sauce), imagery (thousand island sauce), perception (fancy sauce), assertions (magic sauce), strength (XXX sauce) or a specific recipe type (Worcestershire sauce). Sauce is served in a sauce boat; if serving gravy, then the implement is called a gravyboat. Some can genuinely be mysterious such as Jezebel sauce, found mostly in the US, south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Made usually with a mix of pineapple preserves, apple jelly, horseradish, and mustard, it's a condiment with a hot, sweet & saucy character and thus thought an allusion to the reputation of the Biblical Jezebel, the wickedness of whom is recounted in 1 Kings 21:5–16. She was sort of the crooked Hillary Clinton of her time.
In some markets, tomato sauce is called "tomato ketchup" (in general use almost always clipped to "ketchup"). In 2004, US food processing company HJ Heinz conducted its "Four stars fall for Heinz Ketchup" promotion with the debut of Heinz's new Celebrity Talking Labels. Former Pittsburgh Steelers National Football League (NFL) quarterback Terry Bradshaw (b 1948), dual Olympic gold medalist, and two-time FIFA Women's World Cup champion Mia Hamm (b 1972), actor William Shatner (b 1931) and actor Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) were the subjects of the talking labels campaign and the range was released in what Heinz said were "limited-edition bottles of the condiment", each featuring labels with quotes from each celebrity. The promotion was well-received and extended until 2006 when Heinz offered consumers the opportunity to create their own labels by ordering customized bottles through a page on the Heinz website.
Although lexicographers, chefs and the authors of cook
books will tend to be precise, in general use there’s likely sometimes some
overlap in the use of “dressing”, “sauce”, “gravy”, “mayonnaise” & “relish”. As a general principle, the following
characteristics of each is an at least indicative list: A dressing
is a liquid or semi-liquid mixture used to flavor and enhance salads or other
dishes and made usually with a combination of oil, vinegar, herbs, spices, and
other flavorings, the common types including vinaigrette, ranch & Caesar. A sauce
is a thickened liquid or semi-solid food item that accompanies or is used to
enhance the flavor of other foods. Sauces
may be savory or sweet and are served both hot & cold, made from a close to
limitless number of ingredients such as tomatoes, cream, stock, fruits, or
vegetables. As an example of the wide
range of types, at the one meal one may encounter both barbecue sauce, and
chocolate sauce. Gravy is a particular type of sauce, made classically from juices
of cooked meat combined with flour or cornstarch, combined sometimes with a liquid
such as broth, milk or cream. Most
associated with meat, it’s commonly served also with chips or mashed potatoes
and depending on the intended purpose gravies can be seasoned with herbs,
spices or even flavorings such as fruit to enhance the taste. Mayonnaise
is a usually thick, creamy condiment made from oil, condensed milk, egg yolks,
vinegar or lemon juice, and seasonings.
Most mayonnaise has a richness to the flavor although some can be sweet
and some tart. Relish is made from chopped fruits or vegetables that are pickled
or cooked with vinegar, sugar, and spices and while most are in some way tangy
with a hint of sweetness, there are some which are very sweet. Relishes are extensively used in cooking but
the most popular use is as a topping or accompaniment to dishes like hot dogs,
hamburgers or sandwiches. Pickled
cucumbers are a popular ingredient as is corn and one of the best known
relishes is chutney, of Indian origin and from the Hindi चटनी (caṭnī).
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