I don't think so. If you remove salt or sauce from salad then it's just cut up vegetables. And a sauce without salt won't be very popular too say the least.
In French it's called compote de pommes which I would say is correct. It's a compote, not a sauce.
The runny stuff is a sauce. Salad really just means adding salt to it. In Italy they don't use a sauce as such, but rather just add oil, vinegar and salt separately.
But I get what you're doing. You're taking the extreme approach of "etymology never matters". I get it. I'm able to enjoy the etymology of words and the difference between a sauce and a compote and still say "apple sauce" when I'm talking to English speakers.
... so if you remove the salt, it's not a salad or a sauce? Hmm.