KFC secret recipe accidentally revealed by Colonel's nephew

The Chicago Tribune’s Jay Jones visited the Harland Sanders Cafe and Museum. Along with that visit, he took a trip to speak to Colonel Sander’s nephew Joe Ledington, who helped mix the spices when he was a boy. During some tale-telling and going over family history, Ledington pulled out a scrapbook with some old photos and documents. One of those items was a handwritten note with the recipe.

Here it is:

[quote]
11 spices — Mix with 2 cups white flour

  1. 2/3 Ts salt
  2. 1/2 Ts thyme
  3. 1/2 Ts basil
  4. 1/3 Ts oregano
  5. 1 Ts celery salt
  6. 1 Ts black pepper
  7. 1 Ts dried mustard
  8. 4 Ts paprika
  9. 2 Ts garlic salt
  10. 1 Ts ground ginger
  11. 3 Ts white pepper[/quote]

“Ts” is “tablespoons” as determined by testing.

[quote]
In a subsequent phone interview with a Tribune editor, Ledington dialed back his certainty and expressed reluctance about sharing a recipe that — if it’s legit — ranks among corporate America’s most closely guarded secrets. “It could be; I don’t know for sure,” he said about the handwritten list of ingredients, adding that this was the first time he’d shown it to a reporter. “I’ve only had that album for four years, since my sister passed away.”[/quote]

Between 2/3 tsp Salt, 1 tsp Celery Salt, and 2 tsp Garlic Salt, there’s bound to be somewhere around a tablespoon of salt for two cups of flour. Esp. if table salt and not kosher, that’s uh, well, it certainly explains that signature KFC flavor :-D

Back when franchising was new and Colonel Sanders was still actively visiting restaurants, he was quite the terror. My mother-in-law worked in one of the first KFC locations in Washington State and he used to show up unannounced and disrupt everything. He would imperiously burst into the back areas, point out flaws or processes he felt didn’t measure up and act like a crazy person. He would fire employees, throw utensils and cooking pots on the floor, threaten to close the place, and even give away food to customers that happened to be in the stores at the time. Keep in mind that he didn’t reimburse the store for the food he gave away. He’d just do it on a whim and leave because he was goddamn Colonel Sanders.

This behavior continued even after KFC was bought out and he was kept on as a consultant and “face” of the company. It was one of those weird things where he’d bust into a store location, do his fuck-you-I’m-Colonel-Sanders bit and corporate guys would tag along behind him to tell everyone not to worry. When he “fired” an employee or threatened to close places, these guys would have to discretely let store managers know that no one was actually fired and that he had no power to do anything.

Later, I read other accounts of him that matched what my mother-in-law had told me. The guy was quite the character.

Bonus fun fact: Sander’s once shot a man.

[quote]
Sanders was managing a Shell gas station in Nashville during the late 1920s and was at war with a competing Standard Oil station down the road. Matt Stewart, the owner of the Standard Oil station kept painting over a sign that was advertising Sanders’ business. Sanders and Stewart were both hot tempered men, and pretty soon Sanders threatened to shoot Stewart if he kept messing with his signs.

Sanders was meeting with two district managers from Shell one day when they saw Stewart painting over the sign yet again. Sanders and the two men rushed down to stop him. Stewart saw the men coming, jumped off his painting ladder and started shooting. Robert Gibson, one of the Shell managers, was killed in a hail of Stewart’s bullets. Sanders grabbed Gibson’s gun off his dead body and returned fire along with the surviving manager, H. D. Shelburne.

“Don’t shoot, Sanders! You’ve killed me!” Stewart reportedly said. Obviously, Sanders hadn’t killed Stewart but he was indeed wounded. And in the wake of the bloody mess all the surviving men were arrested. The case went to trial and both Shelburne and Sanders got off without serving any time. Matt Stewart on the other hand received 18 years for murdering Shell manager Robert Gibson.

Stewart died two years later at the hands of a deputy sheriff who it was rumored had been paid off by the surviving relatives of the Gibson family. The deputy sheriff was never charged.[/quote]

While his behavior might be uncouth, I think having him show up and give away food at your location would more than pay for itself in terms of publicity and pure bragging rights for that franchise location.

My mother-in-law and other managers from back then say differently. It was a source of pain for them because he’d give away hundreds of dollars worth of food, which is a big deal if you’re just a franchisee. The free publicity didn’t work out because most people assumed Sanders wasn’t actually a real guy. To this day, most people think Sanders is completely made up, so him showing up to a location held as much cachet to eaters as “Ronald McDonald” showing up somewhere.

Lol, what an awesome thread. I had no idea Sanders was so gangster. KFC even sounds like it could be a rap song or rapper name.

It’s even funnier when I think about how now they’ve got odd comedians playing him on commercials.

Real bummer Josh Ozersky isn’t alive to see this, would love to read his response.

I looked up a bunch of people that were convinced they cracked the recipe, and none had it exactly right. Marjoram instead of thyme; onion salt over garlic salt. MSG. Missing ginger. None had it down.

Colonel Sanders is on an episode of What’s My Line on Youtube. I don’t remember the year, but it was probably early 50’s, and some of the panelists hadn’t heard of him. He seemed a little odd, but strangely charismatic.

As a reminder, you cannot patent a recipe, which is why certain recipes (KFC, Coca Cola) are kept so secret.

I do recall that the early Kentucky Fried Chickens were a total mess. The colonel had waaaay too many menu items, which caused all sorts of chaos in the kitchen.

It wasn’t until he expanded into Texas. He franchised about 4 restaurants to this dude named Dave Thomas, who basically streamlined the menu down and did a lot of other smart things to make his KFCs stand out. The colonel takes Dave under his wing and adopts a lot of his ideas. Later, Dave leaves and starts his own fast food chain, Wendy’s.

I figured it was just black pepper and MSG…

As Telefrog says, and that link expands upon, testing determined “Ts” to mean tablespoon, not teaspoon.

That means it’s 2/3 Tablespoons of Salt, 1 Tablespoon of Celery Salt, 2 Tablespoons of Garlic Salt. So almost 4 tablespoons of salt for 2 cups of flour. I think the daily recommended salt (2500mg) is about 1 tablespoon of salt.

So yeah, holy shit. That’s a lot of salt. And it does explain the signature flavor.

D’oh, I even read that twice to be sure I’d gotten the measurement right! Thanks for the correction, @Rock8man :)

And noooo kidding. Salt city.

Then again, chefs always say the secret to great restaurant food is usually one (or more) of Salt, Butter, and/or Cream :-D

They learned a lot of stuff from each other. Dave came up with the iconic red and white stripes on the chicken bucket and convinced Sanders that the rest of the chain should adopt the color scheme as a way to cement the brand in the mind of the customers - a radically new idea at the time. Sanders taught him most of the basics of management, kitchen discipline, and how to negotiate for bulk buying.

Oddly, even though Sanders was kind of a son-of-a-bitch to people that he felt betrayed him, Sanders never felt any animosity towards Thomas. I guess he felt that since Thomas got into the burger game, they weren’t competitors.

I’m not sure what your source for that, is. As a patent attorney, I’m unaware of any categorical prohibition against patenting a recipe (either as a composition of matter to the result or as a method to be carried out).

There are, of course, potential reasons for why a given recipe cannot be patented, such as the product already having been on sale (even though the exact recipe was not known to the public).

If some one invented a new cola formulation, today, they could hypothetically patent it.

@Woolen_Horde is probably thinking of the fact that you can’t copyright a “mere listing of ingredients.”. You can copyright “substantial literary expressions” related to your recipe, e.g., illustrations and very involved methodologies, but the list of ingredients themselves is more or less freely useable by anyone else.

I’m not really seeing the issue with the salt content. The coating is a small percentage of the total product. Salting or brining chicken is a great way of imparting flavor. As well, nobody is eating two cups of flour at a sitting. I haven’t had KFC in a long while, but I don’t recall it as being any more salty than any other fast food chicken. YMMV of course.

The biggest danger to KFC here is that someone could recreate their chicken as it was back in the 50’s-70’s, before the quality went to crap.

My kid was curious about the place and I finally broke down and took him, after having given up on the chain 15 years ago. Man, the quality was just terrible.

AND NO LITTLE BUCKET PARFAITS! Jerks.

I’m reasonably sure their chicken is brined before being breaded (actually, just checked, and yes, it is), so it’s brine atop unusually salty flour (you’d normally do 1, maybe 2 tsp of salt in breading like that at home).

I’m not particularly concerned about any of this, mind you; fast food’s salty, man. Gotta get it in there somewhere. I was just sorta impressed by how much of the damn stuff they [purportedly] use in that step.

If you wanted to keep a recipe secret for competitive or marketing reasons, then patenting it would not make sense anyway since the recipe would then be made public.