Where did you get that info from? You made me curious, so I tried to dig in a bit. The entire early history seems a little murky when you push past the 'official' story and try to find evidence. But even so, I couldn't find anything at all referencing what the flavor was intended to be. I was trying to find Morrison's original patent from ~1885 to see what it had in it, but couldn't dig it up.

I also found a the true story they didn't mention it. Most of the "true stories" seems to be the struggle for credit.

The early drug store/soda fountain days seem pretty wild. People were freely mixing up drugs and sugar water.

The early seeds of RiteAid originated in a small central PA. town. Think about all the derivative business spun out of drug store plus soda fountain.

The most questionable part of the "true story" to me was that the soda was named after Dr. Charles T. Pepper because Morrison was in love with his daughter. According to census data, Dr. Pepper's daughter was 5 years old when Morrison was 17 and lived in the same town, and there's no record of Morrison having worked for Dr. Pepper as claimed or having known him at all. But there was another Dr. Pepper who lived a couple houses down from Morrison when he was 17 who had a 16 year old daughter at the time.

It definitely has notes of horse or barn. I guess the point is the first vanilla, almond, or cherry cola was original.

The preamble makes more sense to me with the olfactory dynamic added.