secret sauce

noun

1

: a sauce that adds an important element to a dish and that has ingredients which are typically kept secret

A frank of beef, pork, and veal … is split lengthwise, coated with secret sauce, and cooked on a grill.

—Jane and Michael Stern

called also special sauce

2

: an element, quality, ability, or practice that makes something or someone successful or distinctive

If leadership has a secret sauce, it may well be humility. A humble boss understands that there are things he doesn't know.

—The Economist

called also special sauce

Examples of secret sauce in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

There isn’t any secret sauce to keeping track of bags. —Bradley Brownell / Jalopnik, Quartz, 6 May 2024

The couple prides itself on making many items in-house — including homemade awesome sauce, bourbon glaze, honey mustard, ranch, tartar sauce and secret sauce for the steak sandwich. —Philip Freeman, Charlotte Observer, 7 May 2024

Most teams arrived and set up on Friday, with cars and trucks loaded with barbecue equipment, charcoal, specialty woods for smokers, temperature probes (many with BlueTooth setup), secret sauces and seasonings. —Susan Selasky, Detroit Free Press, 6 May 2024

Is there a secret sauce that made the song work, sonically? —Chris Willman, Variety, 3 May 2024

We’d be left with a diluted version of its secret sauce. —New York Times, 19 Apr. 2024

TikTok's algorithm, the secret sauce of the app, is owned by ByteDance. —Bobby Allyn, NPR, 20 Apr. 2024

Then, there’s the issue of TikTok’s algorithm, the app’s secret sauce that recommends videos to users. —Mary Clare Jalonick and Haleluya Hadero, Quartz, 18 Apr. 2024

Creating delicious yet unpretentious restaurants is their secret sauce (well, that and a mean marinara), and San Sabino is no exception. —Vogue, 25 Mar. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1906, in the meaning defined at sense 2