By Count Friedrich von Olsen
As the regular readers of this column know, I am not an American by birth but rather by choice. Many of us naturalized citizens are more knowledgeable about American History than those who are actually born here. That may be because those of us who have been naturalized are enthusiastic about becoming full-fledged Americans and are actually paying attention during the required history lessons preparatory to our citizen ship tests while you native born Americans were too busy with all of the typical American adolescent distractions when you were sitting in your junior year American History class…
My pride in my knowledge about things American and how I can best others in the recitation of trivia about American culture is prodigious. So let us take something peculiarly American, soft drinks…
I’ll start with my own experience. The first real indentation of any soft drink on my consciousness came during the war. This came not through actually drinking it, but seeing its advertisements. The war to which I refer is World War II. I was obliged to come to this country even before America got into it and almost two decades before I became a citizen. I needed some training on a particular piece of equipment that was not only useful but which I dare say later proved crucial to our undertakings in the activities I and some of my colleagues were engaged in at that time in the out-of-the-way places we were operating in like Spain and Portugal. There was only one way of getting that training, which was from the manufacturers of the equipment. Thus, I arrived in New York City in 1940, boarded a train in Grand Central Station or Penn Station – I cannot now remember which – and travelled to some village or other in New Jersey, where I found passage on a passenger train west. It was during the daylight portion of this sojourn when I visually encountered billboards strategically placed for the benefit of those traveling this particular route. A product advertised was something called – I couldn’t quite get it – Zup. “Zup?” I asked myself. “What’s that?” After the third or the fourth billboard hawking this particular substance, I recognized that the Z wasn’t a Z, but a 7 or at least a letter that was a dead ringer for a 7. That was even more confusing. “These Americans,” I said “They’re making up letters!” Eventually it was explained to me that it was 7-up, as in Seven up. The seven presumably referred to the number of the effervescent carbonated bubbles that were continuously rising to the top of a poured glass of the stuff…
Another vignette on 7-up. Sometime in either the late 1940s or very early 1950s, it became all the rage in France. I had extensive holdings in both Nice and Marseille at that time. Previously, in the cafes and restaurants, one commonly shared a bottle of wine with those at his table during lunch. For several years, it seemed, wine was no longer a lunchtime beverage. Instead, the lion’s share of the tables in Nice sported a large green bottle of 7-up…
Soft drinks originated in America, it seems, in the 1870s. Phosphate soda grew popular with the children of Civil War veterans around that time. The initial concoctions included a mixture of calcium, magnesium and potassium phosphate salts with a small amount of phosphoric acid. These gave the beverage a semi-sour taste, a tang that complimented the fruit juice that they were mixed with. The 1870s were just slightly before my time, and as you know, I spent my youth in Europe, but it is my understanding that cherry became the most popular flavored soft drink of this era. At some point a druggist carbonated these mixtures, and the classic cherry phosphate was born…
In the 1880s, Moxie, or what would later became known as Moxie Cola, the first bottled carbonated beverage made in America, was produced. It was formulated by Dr. Augustin Thompson, a civil war veteran and homeopathic physician from Union, Maine. He did not really intend Moxie as a soft drink but more as a cure-all for lethargy, headaches, stomach problems or as an aid in digestion. A basic ingredient in Moxie was gentian root. The original product, as opposed to subsequent variations, had something of a medicinal taste and was described as being neither bitter nor sweet but a combination of both. Thompson marketed it as “a delicious blend of bitter and sweet, a drink to satisfy everyone’s taste.” Thompson carbonated it and began bottling it by 1885. Moxie’s distinctive taste grew popular and in the 1920s Moxie outsold Coca-Cola. In the 1930s, it lost its popularity in competition with its competitors as a fountain drink because the then-current practice of soda jerks increasing the syrup to carbonated water ratio in fountain drinks did not boost Moxie’s sweetness as was the effect with Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola. In 1948, the Moxie formula was made sweeter, with disastrous results. Overnight, half of those who drank it regularly ceased doing so. Two years later, the company reintroduced Thompson’s formula, billing it as the “Original…Since 1884.” In 1968, Moxie repeated the 1948 mistake, sweetening the product. It did not work that time either, and today, Moxie is a regional beverage, widely available in New England but virtually nowhere else in the United States except in specialty shops…
Now I am going to show off. I will ask a question I often ask people. By a margin of two-to-one, they supply the wrong answer. Which is older, Coca-Cola or Dr. Pepper? You can find the answer by going to the bottom of the page at the end of my column and flipping the Sentinel upside down to read the footnote…
Until now, the formula for Coca-Cola has been one of the world’s most closely guarded corporate secrets. Supposedly, the formula is locked away into an impenetrable vault at the Atlanta headquarters of the Coca-Cola Company. Only two of the company’s employees know the combination to that safe and they are not permitted to travel together, lest a plane crash, train derailment or car wreck create a circumstance in which the formula is lost forever…
Yes, readers, I have learned, through both hook and crook, what the Coca-Cola formula is. It is unlikely that anyone other than someone of my means and assets, not to mention determination, would be able to achieve this knowledge. I am going to reveal it here, in the Sentinel, so that dire consequence, hinted at in the above paragraph never comes upon us, in which some unforeseeable set of dual fatalities leaves the world without the Pause That Refreshes, that is, The Real Thing…
But before I do so, let me tell you of my prediction of what I believed was in Coca-Cola before I learned the actual ingredients. First, my wrong guess: Knowing that Coca-Cola originated in Columbus, Georgia in the laboratory of John Pemberton, a pharmacist, I reasoned that it must contain peach juice or peach extract. After all, I reasoned, Georgia is the Peach State. It turns out I was wrong. There is no peach juice or peach concentrate in Coca-Cola. As I stated, the peach guess was based on reasoning. My other two guesses were based on my senses. I could always detect, it seemed, a hint of vanilla in the Coke I drink. Even more pronounced to my palate was the taste of orange. Orange juice or orange extract had to be part of the concoction, I was certain. It turns out I was right on the score of both vanilla and orange. Let me relate, to those who are old enough to remember, that in 1985, the Coca-Cola Company monkeyed with what should never have been adulterated. It changed the formula of its celebrated product. The company called the new offering, with verve and originality, “New Coke.” It was an immediate bust. First off, it didn’t taste as good. More than that, the company lessened the carbonation. To make a bad pun, the product fell flat and then, several months later, “Coke Classic” was reissued. Coke Classic so overwhelmingly outsold New Coke, that eventually New Coke was discontinued. Along the way, my suspicion about the vanilla was confirmed, at least unofficially. When I tasted the New Coke, I could tell that something was, or some things were, missing. When I let my tongue size it up, it seemed to me that I was not experiencing the vanilla sensation. Moreover, about a month after the changeover to New Coke, the bottom fell out of the international vanilla market…
Okay, a few more things. This information comes from someone who filched, at least temporarily, Mr. Pemberton’s notebook. The information has been passed along to me. There is a reference to coca. At the time Mr. Pemberton made the pertinent entries into the notebook in question, pure coca, with its cocaine content, was legally available. That changed later, when cocaine was revealed as a less than salutary substance, and it was outlawed. But the coca flavor remains, as denuded coca leaves are still used by the Coca-Cola Company to create one of the flavoring extracts. Also, today, instead of using citric acid as Mr. Pemberton provides for in his recipe, the company has substituted phosphoric acid. Batches of Coca-Cola are made by combining a liquid solution, referred to by some as the “syrup” with a flavoring, which is a blending of separate ingredients. Mr. Pemberton called the flavoring “7X.” So, without further ado…
According to the notebook, the liquid solution or syrup involves a fluid extract of coca – 3 drams USP; citric acid – 3 ounces; caffeine extracted from cola nuts – 1 ounce; sugar – 30 ounces; water – 2.5 gallons; lime juice – 1 quart; vanilla – 1 ounce; and caramel – 1.5 ounces or more for color. Now for the secret 7X flavor, you will need alcohol – 8 ounces; orange oil – 20 drops; lemon oil – 30 drops; nutmeg oil – 10 drops; coriander – 5 drops; neroli – 10 drops; and cinnamon – 10 drops…
Of course the ratio is of primary importance. For every 5 gallons of syrup, blend in 2 ounces of the 7X flavor…

Dr. Pepper! Pharmacist Charles Alderton stirred up the first batch of Dr. Pepper in Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store in Waco, Texas in 1885. Another druggist, John Pemberton, derived the first Coca-Cola mixture at the Eagle Drug and Chemical House, a drugstore in Columbus, Georgia in 1886.