Imagine you are trapped on a deserted island for ten years. You are allowed to pick one sauce of any type and given unlimited quantities of it. What would you choose? Which is truly the King of the Sauces?
Is cheese in a can a sauce? I assume the sauce is not for nutrition, but for flavor and other foods are provided for calories and vitamins/minerals.
In that case, probably either sweet baby rays original BBQ, or Stubbs Sweet heat BBQ sauce. However McDonalds sweet and sour sauce goes well with multiple things. I’m going with sweet & sour sauce. I’m so white trash.
Can I call balsamic vinaigrette and get the vinegar and olive oil separately, or is that cheating? C’mon dude, ten years…
I always heard that “hunger is the best sauce”.
Admittedly it is a crappy premise, so leniency in sauce requirements seems reasonable. I think Voltaire said the thing about hunger.
I’d be pretty happy with a bottle of Valentina Extra Hot.
Bolognese sauce. Meat, tomato, vegatables, sugar and milk. I’ll get the clams.
I think I want just a smidge more information, which are linked. I’m assuming you’re provided with some food to be eating over the 10 years, because otherwise you’re gonna want to find some nutritionally balance high-calorie option that’ll keep you alive.
In the same vein, what sauce I want is going to depend on the resources on said island as well as what those ‘staple’ foods are going to be.
Because if I’m stuck for 10 years, I’m damn well going to experiment with fermenting my own fish / oyster sauce out of captured seafood, so that might eliminate some things. And if all the food is expired MREs with the Tabasco taken out that’s one thing, but if it’s 3 huge crates - one rice, one beans, one multi-vitamins, it’s another.
Again, the premise is stupid and was simply meant to highlight which sauce is the most versatile, tasty or just one you never get tired of.
But experimenting with sauces is a good idea. Maybe you could grow or find peppers or herbs or spices. Possibly there is game and seafood available.
It’s only a crappy premise because the answer depends on what the sauce is being paired with. A few thoughts …
Best sauce for roast chicken: Swiss Chalet dipping sauce, which has some powerfully addicting ingredients, and also works well as a dip for fries.
Best sauce for turkey: Longo’s Turkey Gravy, equally addictive, and equally wondrous with fries.
Best sauce for roast beef: hunter sauce, with added red wine and dried porcini mushrooms.
Best sauce for roast pork, especially for porchetta: roasted apple sauce.
So, I’m a dilettante. It all depends. 
Well then, my answer will be based on my assumptions and head canon.
I’ve washed ashore on a semi-tropical deserted island, along with many crates that were designed to be used to bootstrap some small Asian village in the middle of nowhere.
Thus I have access to a full set of cooking materials such as cooking utensils, cassette stoves with fuel, as well as some ready made shelter. Good tasting local freshwater is available, and native shellfish and crustaceans are easily available in tidal pools, and improvised spear fishing will become a thing over time with a kitchen knife tied to a support pole or the like.
Many staples came ashore in the same wreck, including enough staples such as rice, soybeans, spam, and other semi-processed but incomplete foods to sustain my survival, but cooking will be required. Sadly, the crate will all such spices and sauces didn’t make it to the shore - searching for it will be the one thing other than dreaming of escape that will fill my many, many empty hours.
Only one other giant crate came ashore, thankfully it was mine - my next generation sesame garlic chili citrus sauce that I had prepared to sell!
It’s a homemade sauce with just what it says on the tin, hot roasted chili peppers, lemon juice, sesame oil, roasted garlic and salt.
Because I’ll be damned trying to live without chili heat or garlic. Death first!
And you bet I’ll desperately try to grown more peppers from the seeds in the sauce, even if it’s almost certainly a lost cause. Something else to do while trying to ferment oyster and fish sauces, and see if I can cultivate a local island yeast.
I think Frank’s Wing Sauce is the most versatile. I’ve had it with not only chicken wings but also just regular fried chicken, Taco bell chicken quesadilla, and fried hamburger dishes.
But if those weren’t available on the desert island, but another source of calories entirely, I might pick a different sauce, similar to what others have said.
Cholula, it’s the answer for everything from eggs to ice cream.
I mean, of course it depends. But you only get to pick one in the hypothetical.
Now, to be fair, I don’t think my pick of Valentina Extra Hot is the same as it being the “king of sauces.” It’s not even close to being my favorite sauce, but it is the sauce that I imagine would be the least likely for me to get sick of in unlimited quantities, and would go best with whatever I have to eat (and even masking the flavors of perhaps various creatures or foods I don’t want to eat but have to on a deserted island.)
Assuming there will be formerly-live protein in my diet, I’m gonna go with Bulldog Tonkatsu Sauce. It’s comfort food.
Worcestershire, or maybe something soy based. I can make my own sauces, so a dark sauce would just be a useful flavoring to have handy. I am assuming their are other foods I can season with my unlimited supply of sauce, and I can use those other foods to make additional sauces. If there’s no other food I’ll pick something like Bolognese which I might be able to survive on. And if you try to rule out making my own sauces I’ll just use other foods to make seasoning not defined as ‘sauce’.
Mayonnaise. It’ll be delicious for the first day, then the island sun will bake the eggs and give me severe food poisoning that puts me out of my solitary misery.
Assuming “you have safe storage facilities and it never goes bad” is part of the hypothetical, I choose Sriracha.
Day-old (flavors have to meld), home-made Thousand Island Dressing. Can be used with salad, meat, etc.
I’m assuming that this magic sauce just appears at the touch of a button, and it’s safe.
The best thing in the world that comes in a bottle - Jimmy’s Sate Sauce. Easy to find in Australia and the UK but I can’t find a US site for it. I once ran out of Jimmy’s, so now I always buy 3 at a time.
For pure versatility, I’ll go Holbrooks Worcestershire sauce