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By Root 116 0

John Pemberton whipped up his first cocaine-laced drink he was actually cloning Vin Mariani, a coca leaf-infused red wine that had been selling successfully in Europe since 1863. John’s version—called “Pemberton’s French wine coca”—had cocaine and wine in it too, but John added kola nut extract to give the drink additional kick (as if it needed it) from the stimulant alkaloid caffeine. Shortly after John had perfected his new drink, local Prohibition hit Atlanta in 1886, and the booze had to come out. The wine was replaced with sugar syrup to make it sweet along with some citric acid for tang, and the name of the new drink was changed to “Coca-Cola,” representing the beverage’s two very stimulating ingredients. As enthusiasm for cocaine-based tonics waned toward the end of the century, Coca-Cola manufacturers were again forced to ditch another key ingredient. By 1903, the cocaine in Coca-Cola had to come out too.

Although it was a major change to the recipe, removing cocaine from Coca-Cola didn’t alter the beverage enough to keep it from becoming the world’s number one fountain and bottled soft drink over the years. People enjoyed the drink for its refreshing taste. And, the drink did, after all, still contain enough caffeine to provide a sufficient spring to the step. The drink’s success spawned many clones from competitors with only slight variations on the formula’s top secret taste, but none, including Pepsi, would become as big a phenomenon as Coke. Many recipes were floating around at the time. It is well documented that John sold several copies of the original recipe along with shares in his company to help him through the morphine addiction and poverty that plagued his later years. John died at age 57 in 1888 from stomach cancer before knowing the enormous success of his creation.

Although the drink is 99 percent sugar water, that other 1 percent is the key to the drink’s unique taste.The tangy citrus flavors, from lime juice, citrus oils, and citric acid (today the citric acid has been replaced with phosphoric acid), was used by John to overcome the inherent unpleasant bitterness of cocaine and caffeine. Even after removing the coca from the drink, it was still necessary to conceal the ghastly flavor of kola nut caffeine from the taste buds with the sweet, tangy syrup.

To make an accurate clone of Coca-Cola at home I started with the medicinal ingredient, probably just as John did. But rather than harvesting kola nuts, we have the luxury of access to caffeine pills found in any grocery store or pharmacy. One such brand is Vivarin, but it is yellow in color with a thick coating and it tastes much too bitter. NoDoz, however, is white and less bitter, with a thinner coating. Each NoDoz tablet contains 200 milligrams of caffeine, and a 12-ounce serving of Coke has 46 milligrams in it. So if we use 8 NoDoz tablets that have been crushed to powder with a mortar and pestle (or in a bowl using the back of a spoon) we get 44 milligrams of caffeine in a 12-ounce serving, or 36 milligrams in each of the 10-ounce servings we make with this recipe.

Finding and adding the caffeine is the easy part. You’ll probably have more trouble obtaining Coke’s crucial flavoring ingredient: cassia oil. I was hoping to leave such a hard-to-get ingredient out of this recipe, but I found it impossible.The unique flavor of Coke absolutely requires the inclusion of this Vietnamese cinnamon oil (usually sold for aromatherapy), but only a very small amount.You’ll find the cassia oil in a health food store (I used the brand Oshadhi), along with the lemon oil and orange oil.The yield of this recipe had to be cranked up to 44 10-ounce servings since these oils are so strong—just one drop of each is all you’ll need. Find them in bottles that allow you to measure exactly one drop if you can. If the oils don’t come in such a bottle, buy eyedroppers at a drug store. Before you leave the health food store, don’t forget the citric acid.

This recipe, because of the old-fashioned technique of adding the syrup to soda water, creates a clone of Coke as