Monday, December 1

Who Was Dr. Pepper?

On December 1, 1885, Dr Pepper was first served. The drink, as the story goes, was an instant hit with the customers at Wade Morrison’s Waco, Texas pharmacy. It was sold as a “brain tonic” and people greatly enjoyed drinking what they started calling “waco soda,” but Morrison sought a better name for he intended to grow the beverage. The name he settled on, Dr Pepper, has kept soda historians scratching their heads ever since. 



The first story that is always told in answer to the question of how Dr Pepper (it is correctly stylized without the period following “Dr”) got its name is also almost universally assumed to be false. It goes that Wade Morrison, before moving to Waco, Texas, had pursued the affections of a young lady in the Virginia town in which he lived. Her father disapproved of the relationship and forbade Morrison to see his daughter. In a bid to honor the disgruntled father, Morrison named this alluring concoction after the man, one Dr. Charles T. Pepper. 

The biggest flaw in that tale comes down to the fact that Dr. Charles T. Pepper was a real person, and census records show that when Morrison lived in Virginia, Pepper’s eldest daughter would have been just eight years old. Intrepid sodaphiles have perused census records and shown that in town about forty miles away from where Charles T. Pepper lived, there was another man named Pepper who did in fact have a daughter the appropriate age for a relationship with Wade Morrison. It is even surmised from the ordering of the census records that Morrison would have lived within walking distance of this Pepper family. Regardless, it seems strange that after moving across the country Morrison would still seek to honor his former-paramour’s father enough to name a soft drink after him. 

Branching away from the lost-love theories, there are other less creative ideas as to how Dr Pepper came to be so named. One that seems to make a lot of sense, especially when considering that Morrison originally sold Dr Pepper as a revitalizing tonic, is that Dr Pepper refers to the pep delivered by the drink. Some surmise that “pepper” refers to the Pepsin in the recipe, but as the recipe hasn’t been revealed we’ll never be sure. Ultimately, searching for a reason behind this enigmatic name is largely fruitless and open to conjecture, adding a healthy dose of mystery to those delicious 23 flavors. 

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