What flavour is Dr Pepper?

According to foodie lore It’s supposed to taste like a “pharmacy.” I’m not kidding.

^^ Correct.

A pharmacist in Waco, Texas liked to come up with new cola concoctions at the soda counter. Cherry colas were popular, as were “amonia” colas (Texans, go figure), but he liked the variety of fruit flavors that were becoming available.

“He liked the way the drug store smelled, with all of the fruit syrup flavor smells mixing together in the air. He decided to create a drink that tasted like that smell. He kept a journal, and after numerous experiments he finally hit upon a mixture of fruit syrups that he liked”

I taste a lot of cherry in Dr. Pepper, but that’s just me.

Ah so that’s why it tastes like a medicine we have over here called Calpol (it’s for high fever in children)

Side note: The mysterious numeric combination, 10 – 2 – 4, on the label is there to remind people to have a Dr. Pepper at those times of the day to perk up, or “Drink a bite to eat at 10, 2, and 4.”

Dr. Pepper was first sold over the counter at the drug store in Waco in 1885. I waas first seen outside Texas at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis (The Louisiana Purchase Exposition), which also debut’ed new foods that later became American culinary (?) icons: Puffed wheat, peanut butter, iced tea, cotton candy, the snow cone, the ice cream cone, the hamburger (dubious claim), and the hot dog (dubious claim). Like Dr. Pepper, many of these foods were regional favorites, but there is no doubt that these foods became extremely popular nationwide after the 1904 exposition.

The Dr. Pepper Museum
The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair Exposition

We still have some ancient pharmacies with soda fountains in a few of the little towns nearby. One of them makes a mean fried bologna sandwich.

I love those places.

Never was able to define the taste. Seemed kinda carmel-y. But not in a good way. I dislike Dr pepper.

I’m going to go for vile sugary hell flavour.

Dr. Pepper has always been my favorite. I do taste cherry in there, and I like Cherry Dr. Pepper.
I like it because it’s not boring. I’ve been drinking it 40+ years and it still doesn’t taste like anything else, and nothing succeeds in really tasting like it. I don’t know of anything else, off hand, that I can say that about.

Fresca is usually my #2 choice. Hard to get tired of it, too, since it’s infrequently available.

That’s not a flavor, that’s a miasma.

It’s dr. pepper flavor.

Wouldn’t you like to be a pepper too?

A native Texan, I grew up on that 10–2-4 stuff. I still prefer it marginally over Coca Cola. My Grandmother swore that her neighbor invented it, but my mother always disputed that. She, however, maintained her own little fiction about it, which was that it contained prune juice. I still think it tastes a bit like that.

When I moved to NYC in 1962, my folks sent me “Care Packages” every few months that included Dr. Pepper and Wolf-brand chili (my favorite combination), because neither producet was sold there at the time.

Diet Dr. Pepper is the only drink I’ve ever tasted that tastes exactly like it’s non-diet counterpart. I can’t tell the difference.

@Espiritus_Corvus. I agree, with this caveat: If I drink the diet for a while and never touch the real stuff I can trick myself into believing it’s the same. But one sip of the original the diet taste, at least to me, is a bit chemically and the liquid consistency thin.

Still, I completely agree, it’s the best diet version of any of the sodas. Ever try adding a bit of concentrated cherry juice or low-cal vanilla ice cream? Mmmmmm.

I’m laying off aspertame these days and drinking only real soda once in a while. When I do I drink only original Dr. Pepper. It’s sooooo good, especially after having drunk the diet version for so long.

It’s carbonated Prune juice flavor., ick!

Awww…been feeling a bit irregular lately, @Coloma??

@Coloma LOL, no, my bowel action is just fine, thank you very much.

@Coloma, so your bowels are consanant?

@Pachy Haha

I agree, @Espiritus_Corvus – it’s the best diet soda out there.

@Pachy – diet Pepsi is being made with Sucralose (think Splenda) now. I’m not anti-aspartame by any stretch; I just obsessively read labels.

”... the best diet soda out there.”

In case anyone ever wants a low-calorie perfect image of “damning with faint praise”.

I actually prefer diet soda. If I’m going to drink my calories, there should at least be alcohol involved.

Thanks for the info, @Seek. Just staying off artifical sweeteners in general.

I agree with the green goose on carbonated prune juice as the probable origin of Doctor Pepper. There is this strong feeling of having come across this fact somewhere in my distant past. I also concur on the verdict of Diet Dr. Pepper being the best diet approximation of its sugary counterpart. I too prefer it over other diet sodas.

When I was in college back in Connecticut one summer, I worked in a local soft drink mfg plant. It was a regional brand named Cott (“It’s Cott to be good!”). Don’t know if the brand still exists.
Anyway, we made sodas of a flavor called Sarsaparilla. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarsaparilla_(soft_drink) for more info. To me, it tasted almost identical to Dr. Pepper.

It says on the side of the 2 liter size bottle that it is a “spice flavored soda”. I had always thought it was a cherry soda as well, especially when they started making “Cherry Dr. Pepper”, but then I saw the side of the bottle and pointed it out to my husband. I do not like Dr. Pepper, and am strictly a Diet Coke gal.

ugh, I hate diet drinks. They all taste like a chemistry set gone wrong to me. I’m a Jones soda guy.

Sarsaparilla is akin to, or a type of, root beer, @2davidc8, and I never thought of it bearing any resemblance to Dr. Pepper.

We had a Sassafras tree in the yard, and lore had it that both root beer and sarsaparilla were made from the roots.

I do get a bit of a root beer taste in Dr. Pepper, @2davidc8 and @ibstubro. (I don’t actually like Dr. Pepper or root beer, though.)

Actually, you’re right, @ibstubro. Our Sarsaparilla tasted a lot like root beer, come to think of it. We had another flavor, which we called “Champagne”, that tasted more like Dr. Pepper.

We also had two other flavors, Grapefruit and Half-and-Half which literally were identical. We just changed the labels on the bottles to make one or the other.

“Champagne” I’ve not heard of. Possibly a relative of Cheerwine? @2davidc8

Grapefruit was probably Fresca without the diet.

It is prune flavored. That what I was told as a kid. I never asked for it once.

@ibstubro Yes, our Grapefruit flavor tasted a lot like Fresca.

I always thought it tasted like a mixture of Coke and Rootbeer.

Maybe a piece of Fruit Stripe Gum dropped in a Cherry Pepsi? ~