Famous Recipes that will never be known - Inspired by the Authentic Dish Thread

I was having this conversion with a friend of mine when he asked me for the recipe of how i cooked something he loved. and being the drunk a-hole and i straight up told him i wouldnt give him the exact things i do, but i would tell him the gist of it.

That lead to the topic of how chefs dont tell anyone their secrets because then everyone would be as good as them. and some of the example's of these we came up with.

Franklin saying he only uses 50/50 salt/pepper, and his bbq sauce recipes. I have never had Franklin's personally but i have read that there is more to is than that and the bbq sauces he has made on his channel are nothing like his in house sauces.


This is the main question of the thread.

it is said that Jules Alciatore claimed to have not used spinach in his Oyster Rockefeller recipe and he died with the secret. DO you think he kept saying that to throw copycats off, and it actually did have spinach in it?

quote:

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A 1986 laboratory analysis by William Poundstone in Bigger Secrets indicated its primary ingredients were parsley, pureed and strained celery, scallions or chives (indistinguishable in a food lab), olive oil, and capers.

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this was per wiki but how can they say the tested the OG recipe when he died in 1934?