What Are The 23 Secret Flavors In Dr Pepper?

The taste of Dr Pepper is at once singular and complex: Singular because there's no other flavor like it, and complex because it contains a multitude of flavors in one sip — 23 of them, in fact. Dr Pepper was created by pharmacist Charles Alderton in Waco, Texas in 1885. Alderton mixed 23 flavors of syrup to create a brand-new soft drink with an entirely unique flavor. It's like when you poured every soda fountain drink into one cup as a kid, but evidently tastier (and much more financially successful).

Dr Pepper's proprietary combination of 23 flavors remains a secret to this day and is naturally the subject of much speculation, with many amateur sleuths claiming to have reverse-engineered the recipe. Variations can be found across the internet, but the most popular speculative list of Dr Pepper's 23 secret flavors is as follows: amaretto, almond, blackberry, black licorice, carrot, clove, cherry, caramel, cola, ginger, juniper, lemon, molasses, nutmeg, orange, prune, plum, pepper, root beer, rum, raspberry, tomato, and vanilla.

Dr Pepper defies classification. It's fruity but unlike any specific fruit. It's not a cola or a root beer or a citrus soda. It doesn't even actually contain pepper (as far as I know). Although pepper is included on most of the speculative flavor lists created by internet sleuths, the Keurig Dr Pepper company has never confirmed or denied that Dr Pepper contains pepper in any form, and it's not on the official ingredient list (According to corporate lore, Dr Pepper is named after a person, but this hasn't been confirmed by outside sources).

Dr Pepper's flavor is so hard to place because it's not supposed to taste like anything tangible. Alderton once said Dr Pepper was meant to taste like a drug store smelled. Essentially, it's an amalgamation of flavors unlike anything found in the natural world, but it's undeniably delicious.

Diet Dr Pepper is widely regarded as one of the best diet sodas by many soft drink critics (though Dr Pepper Zero Sugar may be coming for its throne). That proprietary combination of 23 flavors is incredibly complex and unique, and even the original version is supposed to taste somewhat artificial, so the addition of artificial sweeteners doesn't detract from the overall flavor. In fact, some might go so far as to claim that Diet Dr Pepper tastes better than the original.

The official ingredients list for classic Dr Pepper includes carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural and artificial flavors, sodium benzoate, and caffeine. This is pretty unhelpful — honestly, it could be the ingredients list of any caramel-colored soda. All I can be certain of is that Dr Pepper doesn't contain prune juice, a rumor the company has officially denied. Thanks to the product's allergen information, I also know that Dr Pepper is free of gluten, coconut, milk, quinine, sulfates, soy, grapefruit, and shellfish.

Speculative lists of the 23 secret flavors in Dr Pepper are hard to disprove, mostly because I can't imagine what these flavor combinations would taste like, and I'm certainly not going to experiment on my own to find out. It's highly unlikely that the Keurig Dr Pepper company will reveal its proprietary blend anytime soon, so I may never know for sure the true 23 secret flavors that compose Dr Pepper.