Dr Pepper and the 23 Flavours Mystery

The simplest question in American soft drinks: what flavour is Dr Pepper? Cherry? Plum? Spiced fruit? Caramel with something underneath it? People have been asking since 1885 and the answer has not improved. Dr Pepper is made from 23 flavours — the company confirms that much. What those 23 flavours are is a trade secret, and the recipe is said to be kept as two halves in safe deposit boxes in two separate Dallas banks, so that no single document holds the whole thing. That detail has never been confirmed by the company, which is itself part of the story. More than 140 years after a pharmacist in Waco first poured it, nobody outside the vault knows what is in the glass.

The Pharmacist and the Smell of the Fountain

Charles Alderton was a Brooklyn-born pharmacist working at Morrison's Old Corner Drug Store in Waco, Texas in 1885. Between prescriptions he mixed drinks at the soda fountain, which in an American drugstore of that era meant carbonated water flavoured from whichever of dozens of syrups the shop kept behind the counter. The range was extraordinary. Raspberry, orange, pineapple and lemon were standard. Celery, coffee, rhubarb and clam were not unusual. The bottles lined the back wall and their combined smell filled the room.

Alderton's idea was to bottle that smell. Not one flavour but all of them at once, in ratios he adjusted by testing on customers until one combination stuck. He offered it to the shop's owner, Wade Morrison, who liked it. Patrons started asking for it by name, and the name they used was Waco. Alderton handed the formula to Morrison, who gave it the name it still has.

Why Dr Pepper is where the certainty stops. The most repeated story credits a real Dr Charles Pepper of Rural Retreat, Virginia, whom Morrison may have worked for before moving to Texas, and a romantic version has Morrison naming the drink to win the doctor's approval to marry his daughter. Historians have gone through the census records and found no evidence Morrison ever worked for him. The daughter, meanwhile, was eight years old when Morrison settled in Waco. The company has never confirmed any explanation. The full stop after Dr was dropped in the 1950s when a redesigned logo made it hard to read, and never came back.

Older Than Coca-Cola, and Sold as a Tonic

Dr Pepper was first served commercially in 1885. Coca-Cola followed in 1886, which makes Dr Pepper the oldest major soft drink brand in the United States — a fact its supporters raise regularly. The two have never occupied the same cultural space. Coca-Cola became the universal drink, present in every country and on every machine. Dr Pepper stayed more specifically American and strongly regional, and in Texas it functions less as a drink than as a point of local identity.

Like most things sold at a drugstore fountain in the 1880s, it was marketed as good for you. Early advertising claimed it aided digestion and restored vim, vigor and vitality — and that word vim is worth noticing, because a Manchester wholesaler used exactly the same Victorian slang for energy when he named Vim Tonic, later shortened to Vimto. Two drinks invented an ocean apart, both sold on the same promise, both outliving the health claim entirely.

It went national in 1904 at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St Louis, the same World's Fair credited with the ice cream cone, in front of nearly twenty million visitors. By 1891 demand had already outgrown the drugstore and Morrison had formed a company with the Waco beverage chemist Robert S. Lazenby. The Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company building on 5th Street, completed in 1906 specifically to bottle it, now houses the Dr Pepper Museum, open since 1991.

Not a Cola, Not a Root Beer, Not a Fruit Drink

In 1966 the US Food and Drug Administration settled a question retailers and drinkers had been arguing about for eighty years: which category does Dr Pepper belong to? The answer was none of them. The FDA determined it is not a cola, not a root beer and not a fruit-flavoured soft drink.

That left it in a category of one, generally called pepper soda after the brand that defined it. The classification has had real commercial consequences since — the existence of a separate pepper category has featured in more than one competition case involving the major cola companies. Dr Pepper is, officially, the only thing like Dr Pepper.

The 23 Flavours: What the Company Will and Will Not Say

The 23 flavours claim has been in the marketing for decades. What the company has never done is say what they are. The ingredient list on a can reads carbonated water, high-fructose corn syrup, caramel colour, phosphoric acid, natural and artificial flavours, sodium benzoate and caffeine. All 23 sit inside that one phrase — natural and artificial flavours — which is a legally protected category requiring no further breakdown. The number is confirmed. The contents are not, and legally do not have to be.

Sensory analysts and food writers have spent years trying to reverse-engineer it. The consensus clusters into groups rather than a list: sweet notes including cherry, vanilla, caramel and molasses; spice including clove, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg; herbal including liquorice, sarsaparilla and wintergreen; and tart or fruity including lemon, raspberry and blackberry. Whether that is the actual 23 or a decent approximation is unresolved.

The company has declined to confirm or deny any specific ingredient with exactly one exception. It has explicitly denied prune juice. The rumour dates back to the 1930s and has been repeated so persistently that a formal denial became necessary — one theory holds it was started by a rival's delivery driver playing on prune juice's laxative reputation, though it may simply be that a lot of people think it tastes like prunes.

In 2009 a shopper named Bill Waters found a ledger book in an antiques store in the Texas Panhandle, filled with formulas on letterhead connected to Morrison's Old Corner Drug Store. One recipe was headed Dr Peppers Pepsin Bitters. Enthusiasts got very excited. The company examined it and declared it a medicinal digestive preparation unrelated to the soft drink. It went to auction in May 2009 and found no buyer. Whether it was a fragment of the original, an early variant or a coincidence remains unresolved, and it is still in private hands.

The US Version and the UK Version

Dr Pepper is not made by the same company everywhere. Keurig Dr Pepper produces it in the United States, Canada and Mexico using high-fructose corn syrup. The Coca-Cola Company makes it under licence in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Japan using sugar. Suntory produces it across most of continental Europe. Three manufacturers, one brand name.

The sweetener difference is the one drinkers notice. High-fructose corn syrup and cane sugar are chemically close but not identical, and they behave differently on the palate — corn syrup tends to read as slightly sweeter with a cleaner finish, sugar as rounder and less sharp underneath. Whether anyone reliably picks it in a blind test is argued about; that the two are chemically distinct is not.

The Dr Pepper 23 US Version stocked here is the American formulation, the corn syrup one made by Keurig Dr Pepper, not the sugar version on UK supermarket shelves. It is, quite literally, a different product wearing the same name — which is why it sells to people who already have Dr Pepper at home.

10-2-4 and When to Drink It

For much of the twentieth century Dr Pepper was sold under the slogan 10-2-4: drink one at ten, two and four o'clock, on the basis of research suggesting energy dips at those hours. It appeared on bottles, in advertising and on the crown caps. During the Second World War, with sugar rationed, the brand leaned on that practical framing and positioned itself as the sensible option, which suited the mood better than indulgence would have.

The slogan faded but the question behind it did not. Dr Pepper is not a breakfast drink and it is not quite a dessert one either. It sits in an afternoon-into-evening register — sweet enough to feel like a treat, complex enough to hold up next to food. Twenty-three flavours doing several jobs at once is, after all, the entire proposition.

The Range at Sweet and Glory

The US range covers Dr Pepper 23 US Version, Cherry, Vanilla Float, Cream Soda, Strawberries and Cream, Creamy Coconut, Blackberry and Real Sugar — the last being the cane sugar version, for anyone who wants to run the comparison themselves rather than take anyone's word for it. All in the 355ml can.

Browse the Dr Pepper range, the full American soft drinks range, or the American sodas guide for the wider imported drinks picture.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 23 flavours in Dr Pepper? Nobody outside the company knows, and there is a legal reason the answer never appears on the can. All 23 sit inside the phrase natural and artificial flavours, which is a protected category that requires no further breakdown, so the number can be advertised while the contents stay secret. Analysts who have tried to reverse-engineer it cluster the profile into sweet notes like cherry and vanilla, spice like clove and cinnamon, herbal like liquorice and sarsaparilla, and tart fruit like lemon and raspberry.

Does Dr Pepper contain prune juice? No, and it is the only ingredient the company has ever explicitly denied. The rumour goes back to the 1930s and has proved unusually persistent — one account has it started by a rival's delivery driver trading on prune juice's laxative reputation, though it may simply be that the flavour profile genuinely reminds people of prunes. Either way the denial is on record, which is more than can be said for any other ingredient.

Is Dr Pepper a cola? Officially no. In 1966 the US Food and Drug Administration ruled that Dr Pepper is not a cola, not a root beer and not a fruit-flavoured soft drink, which left it in a category of its own generally called pepper soda. That classification has since mattered commercially, because the existence of a separate category has featured in competition cases involving the major cola companies.

Why does American Dr Pepper taste different from British Dr Pepper? Different sweetener and a different manufacturer. The American version is made by Keurig Dr Pepper with high-fructose corn syrup; the British one is made under licence by Coca-Cola using sugar. The two sweeteners are chemically close but not the same, and they land differently — corn syrup reads slightly sweeter with a cleaner finish, sugar rounder and softer underneath. It is the same brand made to two recipes.

Is Dr Pepper older than Coca-Cola? Yes, by a year. Dr Pepper was first served commercially in 1885 at a drugstore soda fountain in Waco, Texas, and Coca-Cola followed in 1886. That makes Dr Pepper the oldest major soft drink brand in the United States, which is a fact its drinkers tend to bring up more often than Coca-Cola's do.

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