The Coca-Cola your rotting your guts out with today isn't the Coca Cola that rotted out your great grandfather's guts. On their way from a recipe sorted out for individual use and one developed for mass consumption, things change. Nuances of flavor or texture may be lost or gained. One recipe involves cocaine. The other? Not so much.
Back in 1886, John Pemberton had what you might call a bit of a morphine problem. His solution to sorting this addiction out was to replace morphine addiction with a cocaine addiction. Genius! Instead of snorting or shooting it, Pemberton developed a tasty tonic that he could infuse the drug into and down in a few refreshing gulps. It was the birth of Coca Cola--one of many. There's a number of formulas out there, some written in Pemberton's own hand, that are reputed to be the original. In addition to the fact that today's Coke products don't come packing cocaine as part of their punch, a modern can of the cola has little in common with these early recipes.
The YouTube food aficionados at Glenn and Friends Cooking whipped up a batch of Coca Cola, based on Pemberton's hand scrawled instructions. While its missing a couple of hard-to-get ingredients (like coca leaves), the crew stay as true to the recipe as modernity and their finances will allow.
Image via YouTube
