Sauce

means “salted food,” for giving a relish to meat, as pickled roots, herbs, and so on. (Latin, salsus.)

The sauce was better than the fisk. The accessories were better than the main part. This may be said of a book in which the plates and getting up are better than the matter it contains.

To serve the same sauce. To retaliate; to give as good as you take; to serve in the same manner.

“After him another came unto her, and served her with the same sauce; then a third …”—The Man in the Moon, etc. (1609).

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.