Now you done it! You done gone brought Soupy Sales into this thread!
Much of his schtick was beyond juvenile and forgettable. The pie in the face got old fast. But some of the puppet characters on his show were cute. Pookie, in particular, was fun to watch. White Fang was sometimes entertaining too.
My mom always accused Kilgallen of cheating. She loved Arlene, though.
As did my late aunt.
I’m not saying it was marketed as such to consumers (though I believe it was to the restaurant owners), but that was one of the big innovations of KFC and what made the chicken extra juicy and whatnot. It’s possible I’m misremembering. I also remember that being the draw for Broaster-branded chicken. I mean, every chicken has some sort of “secret” blend of herbs and spices. Yes, pushing that angle marketing-wise and giving the brand mystique is what put it over the top, but if it were not for the cooking process itself and the results it produced, I don’t believe KFC would have done as well.
That makes a lot more sense.
There’s a country club near me where jeans are still prohibited. I go there occasionally for curling events.
I know what you meant about the rules being informal. I’m just always struck with how old-fashioned the show seems in other ways. “Do you work in the trades?” “Have you appeared in legitimate theater?” Sometimes the commercials are the best part; I love the ones for the old business machines from Remington Rand.
Do any of you remember the 1983 book Big Secrets by William Poundstone? He was like a major league Cecil Adams. The book is a fond pleasure in memory though no doubt it’s dated now.
Anyway, one of the Big Secrets he revealed was a laboratory report on KFC:
In his book “Big Secrets,” William Poundstone revealed a laboratory analysis of Kentucky Fried Chicken: “The sample of coating mix was found to contain four and only four ingredients: flour, salt, monosodium glutamate, and black pepper. There were no eleven herbs and spices — no herbs at all in fact… Nothing was found in the sample that couldn’t be identified.” So much for the “secret.” In fact, the chicken’s ingredient statement is available on KFC’s Web site.
Wonder how many people reported headaches after eating MSG soaked chicken not from a Chinese restaurant?
Also related to the eleven herbs and spices:
KFC’s Twitter account indicates that they follow only 11 people on Twitter:
The latter five are all members of the pop group The Spice Girls. So, KFC follows eleven Herbs and Spices. 
Was this recipe supposedly The Colonel’s original recipe? Or was it some bastardized version created after KFC went big-corporate?
I’m almost sure I remember that Kentucky Fried Chicken of old had a coating that had visible flecks of herbs in it.
(Oh, and BTW: You should go re-read my earlier rants about MSG, which I think you may have just quickly skimmed before. I never got headaches from MSG, and I never said that I did.)
Some people have said headaches. I wasn’t referring to you.
Somewhere or other (I can’t find the cite now) Bennett Cerf told a story about seeing Dorothy Kilgallen backstage after one of the shows, quietly crying. Thinking that someone must have died or something, he asked her what was wrong. She said, “It’s been weeks since I’ve guessed anyone’s line!” She really took it seriously.
I’m slightly skeptical of that report. First, I’m pretty sure one of the trademark flavors is white pepper, not black pepper. But it probably has both, and white pepper is just a husked black peppercorn, so perhaps it fits under “black pepper.” I know that when I make fried chicken, putting a good amount of white pepper (in addition to MSG) gets me pretty darned close already to the KFC flavor and aroma. Second, I could swear I remember seeing green specks of stuff in the KFC coating, but I could be wrong about that, as it’s been a long, long time (like a couple decades at least) since I’ve had straight-up KFC original recipe chicken. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the “11 herbs and spices” is just marketing BS by this point.
Poundstone describes the way they got the sample and how it was processed by the food lab. It seems pretty clear and straightforward. assuming that his supplier at KFC didn’t substitute something for the actual mix they used, it ought to be accurate for that time and place. Poundstone admitted that the powers that be at KFC probably streamlined the recipe for cost , ease, and eliminating stuff only the most discriminating diners would notice was missing.
The original 11-herbs-and-spices recipe was published online several years ago. I din’t have a copy here.
For early Lucille Ball, I’d recommend Stage Door and her lumbermen. My sister and I often strut around and intone “The calla lillies are in bloom again.” But that movie was a rich source of early women actors.
The Tribune published one a few years back that purported to be the secret recipe (from an old notebook), but I’m not certain any have been absolutely verified as such (though it is unlikely anyone would verify it.) People who have tried the recipe seem to say that it may or may possibly be an early draft of it, but not the actual recipe. Without being able to go back in time and taste the original version of KFC, it’d be pretty much impossible to tell. There is a Canadian Youtuber (Glen and Friends) who has a long multi-part series trying to track down the recipe and replicate it, filled with the history and how the current recipe may differ wildly from the original, and the such. There is also a seasoning available commercially called 99-X which many say is pretty darned close to KFC.
There is also this recipe which has appeared:
And I’m pretty sure there are others. I haven’t seen the above before just now, but note that it goes with my impression that white pepper dominates the mix, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s legit and really was used as the recipe at some point of KFC’s history. (ETA: Huh … vanilla is an oddball there – and ancho chili peppers? Would anchos be commercially used then? Lots of old recipes have some exotic items in there, but for some reason that sticks out to me. So maybe I’m not so convinced by that one now.)
ETA2: And this is the Chicago Tribune one (lots of white pepper there, too.)
I was about six years old, in 1967, when I first heard of him and his chicken.
There was a cartoon in Playboy back in the '70s (I think) in which the Colonel is being led off in handcuffs with one of the cops saying “They’ve discovered the identity of those eleven herbs and spices.” 
You mean salt and pepper? I’m pretty sure I read in one of Cecil’s columns that this is all there is in the so-called secret recipe. I can’t seem to find the article now, though other sources say much the same thing (or list MSG as the third seasoning), and usually reference William Poundstone’s Big Secrets book as the source.
That seems to be a 1971 recipe, so pretty sure it’s not the original. Even so, it says Sanders Basic Formula. Nobody here has mentioned spiciness at any time and I’d expect that a hot fast food would be memorable. I know that KFC used a lot of fanfare to introduce a spicy variety a few years ago. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t be a reintroduction, but you’d think they would have said they were bringing it back.
The handwritten recipe seems like a far more sensible list. Did anyone notice that even with the weird way of writing “e” (see “thyme”) the “origino” and “calory” appear misspelled?
Ancho chili is incredibly mild, though. Used in those amounts, it would be pretty much undetectable for its heat I think. It’s a quarter teaspoon of ancho to almost 2 teaspoons of black & white peppers. Those two peppers alone I think would be perceived as spicier in that amount to the ancho (though the mechanism and type of “spiciness” is different in the two, as peppercorns do not contain capsaicin, so they’re not necessarily directly comparable.)
I can detect any amount of spiciness in a food. I was given a “baby mild” dish in an Indian restaurant and I found it inedible because of the heat.
Today every food is made spicy. In 1971 it was so rare outside the southwest as to be virtually communistic. Somebody - many somebodies - would be commenting.
So how about it somebodies? Any chance there was chili powder in olden-day KFC?