For over 80 years KFC has managed to keep Colonel Sanders' recipe for his world famous fried chicken a secret.  That secret may have been accidentally revealed in an interview for a travel piece.

Jay Jones, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, was interviewing Joe Ledington, a nephew of Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Colonel Harland David Sanders.  It was initially supposed to be a story for the Tribune's travel section about Corbin, Kentucky, where the colonel served his first fried chicken.  However, Ledington pulled out a family scrapbook containing pictures and the last will and testament of Sanders' second wife, Claudia Ledington, who was instrumental in launching what would become a multibillion-dollar fast-food chain boasting nearly 20,000 KFC restaurants in more than 125 countries.  On the back of the document is a handwritten list for a blend of 11 herbs and spices to be mixed with two cups of white flour.

Those 11 herbs and spices are one of the most legendary and closely guarded secrets in the history of fast food.  Ledington initially told the reporter that it was the original recipe, but he later said that he didn't know for sure.

KFC — which is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands Inc. — calls its recipe "one of the biggest trade secrets in the world." It says that the recipe the reporter saw is not the real thing.  "Many people have made these claims over the years and no one has been accurate — this one isn't either," KFC said in a statement.

The Louisville, Kentucky-based company says that the original recipe from 1940 handwritten by Sanders is locked up in a digital safe that's encased in two feet of concrete and monitored 24 hours a day by a video and motion detection surveillance system.

The Tribune tested the recipe and compared it with a bucket of KFC Original Recipe chicken; they say "it was finger lickin' good."

It's now available for everyone to try it themselves and see if it's real or not.

Source: hypebeast.com