The chocolate chip cookie recipe and the urban legend

Good mate of mine had obviously just got the latest version of the Neiman Marcus cookie email, and queried it with me. You no doubt have seen it; the lady who goes into one of the Neiman Marcus stores in Dallas and so enjoys a cookie she has in the cafe that she asks for the recipe.   Upon asking if there is a cost for the recipe she is told "two fifty."   Assuming this meant $2.50 she buys it, only to see her credit card charged $250.   It's the latest incarnation of an urban legend doing the rounds since 1948.   Back then it involved someone being charged $25 for a fudge cake recipe at a railway cafe who, on being told she had to pay it, decided to get back at the cafe by distributing the recipe to all and sundry.   In the 1960s it was the Waldorf-Astoria hotel for charging $350 for a recipe for its red velvet cake.   By the 1970s it was Mrs Fields charging $250 for a chocolate chip cookie recipe. A story of such persistence that they had to issue a denial of it as late as 1987.   The legend moved on to Neiman Marcus in the 1990s.   But at that time there was no Neiman Marcus cookie, though they developed one in response to the story and the recipe is available on their website.   http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/cookie.asp

Posted via email from Garth's posterous