Colonel Sanders Had A Secret Recipe, And A Secret Manuscript

Paula Deen, step aside. Colonel Harland Sanders is about to teach America "real old-time country and farm cooking before it's forgotten." Yes, Colonel Sanders.

On yellowed pages hidden for decades, the white-jacketed man with a special fried chicken recipe and a vision that helped create the modern fast-food industry reveals he saw a future in another lucrative market � celebrity food books.

The recent discovery of an unpublished manuscript written by the founder of KFC shows that while Sanders was helping build Kentucky Fried Chicken into a global brand, he was recording his life and love of food � and recipes � for the world.

No, not THAT recipe.

Sanders' secret mix of 11 herbs and spices remains locked inside the company's vault.

But the manuscript from the mid-1960s, found recently by an employee rummaging through KFC's archives, again shows that the man who started the world's most popular chicken chain from a Social Security check and his secret recipe was a man before his time.

"This is a new kind of book," Sanders wrote in the first chapter of an approximately 200-page, typewritten manuscript that KFC plans to offer up on the Internet. "There's never been another written like it as far as I know.

"It's the story of a man's life and the story of the food he's cooked and eaten, running right along with it." The half-inch-thick document is chock full of homespun anecdotes and life lessons from Sanders, who struck it rich late in life. It also includes a heaping helping of his favorite personal recipes.

"To me, my recipes are priceless," he wrote.

You can say that again.

The secret blend of herbs and spices, one of the most enduring corporate secrets in American food folklore, isn't revealed in the manuscript, KFC executives say.

But the Colonel proved he was more than a chicken man. On these pages are preserved his personal recipes for omelets, pancakes, casseroles, pies and many more dishes that he said reflected his affinity for "real old-time country and farm cooking." It's a veritable smorgasbord of main dishes, side dishes, desserts and sauces.

And the man who built the KFC chain by cooking up batches of chicken for prospective franchisees promised to offer insights into his culinary style: "I'll be telling you how to prepare it like a man who's talking to you right over your kitchen stove," he wrote.

The company is treating the manuscript like its own Holy Grail. The manuscript is tucked inside KFC's electronic safe in a vault at its Louisville headquarters. It sits next to the Colonel's famous handwritten chicken recipe.

His philosophy on life and cooking spring to life from the pages, 31 years after his death at age 90 in 1980.

"We can't wait to share its secrets with KFC fans around the globe," said Roger Eaton, the restaurant chain's CEO. "Colonel Sanders was a lifelong cook and sage and his life lessons are just as powerful and relevant today as they were 40 years ago." The company plans to publish the manuscript online, probably sometime next year, said Laurie Schalow, a spokeswoman for Yum Brands Inc., the parent of KFC. The Colonel's insights on hard work and giving it your best will be available for free, she said.

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