Green’s Dictionary of Slang

apple sauce n.2

also apple
[the old boarding-house trick of serving an excess of cheaply produced apple sauce to mask the deficiencies in the portions and quality of other food]

(orig. US) flattery, insincere talk, cheek, impudence.

Show quotations
[US]Edwardsville Intelligencer (IL) 14 Sept. 4/4: The Flappers’ Dictionary [...] Apple sauce: Flattery.
[US]H.L. Wilson Professor How Could You! 137: After I had done my song-and-dance (apple-sauce) about the bitters [...] he turned me down cold.
[UK]‘P.B. Yuill’ Hazell and the Three-card Trick (1977) 189: He’d [...] dived straight in and he’d kept the balls in the air. At fifty-three? I should have half his apple.