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

Furthermore, if Google’s distribution is its strongest moat, its secret sauce is arguably the massive amounts of data that flows through its products every day—petabytes from web searches, YouTube videos, Map requests, customer reviews, and much more. —Sharon Goldman, Fortune, 15 May 2024

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

Word History

First Known Use

1906, in the meaning defined at sense 2