Hopefully the latter. I worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken (NOT KFC!) when I was 16 (summer of '69) to make money to buy my first real bass guitar (a Gibson EB-3, but I digress).
We had very specific instructions in the kitchen on how to fry the chicken, from taking it out of the fridge (nothing frozen) to preparing it for the pressure cookers (yep, fried in a pressure cooker). For example: you always pulled the skin down on a drumstick to make sure it covers the meat. And the thigh was broken along the backbone, to better expose the meat to make sure it would cook evenly.
Oh! And we had keels - does anyone remember keels? They were distinct from the breast. Nowadays, they just cut the chicken's breast in half, and they're HUGE. Back then, it was in three parts: breast, keel, breast - and the keel was the best part. Why did the Colonel do that? To ensure that the white meat cooked thoroughly. Nowadays, the two breasts can often be undercooked.
The secret recipe was in a bag shipped to our location from HQ, and the chicken pieces were covered in it by hand after being dipped in another special liquid.
Oh, BTW, the gravy began from what was left over at the bottom of the trays after you poured the fried chicken out of the pressure cookers (Emeril calls it "the yummies"). We made the gravy from scratch. Same as the biscuits.
Of course, that was the 60's before it became KFC.
Ah, the old ‘mudbucker’ pickup.
I have a latter-day SG bass now - not quite as muddy.
-—another special liquid-—
Interesting
Do you recall what it was?