Will We Ever Know What's In Wendy's Secret Krabby Patty Sauce?

To honor the 25th anniversary of Nickelodeon's animated series SpongeBob SquarePants, Wendy's developed a Krabby Patty and a "Pineapple Under the Sea" Frosty to delight customers. On the show, a Krabby Patty is the burger sold at the Krusty Krab, the fast food restaurant where SpongeBob works. One of the running narratives throughout the series is that the villain tries to steal the burgers' secret formula, which Wendy's has taken to heart.

The fast food chain is no stranger to symbolic recipes. It serves up square burgers as a marker that the company doesn't cut corners when it comes to food and service — and that its burger patties are so good they need to be clearly visible when tucked into buns. The Krabby Patty Kollab Burger once again offers a square burger patty that, upon first glance, looks like a Dave's single ordered off Wendy's regular menu. While this quarter pound of beef is topped with American cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles, and onion, the special order also includes an off-pink-colored sauce that can be compared to French or Thousand Island dressing. This is the top-secret Krabby Kollab Sauce. It's so secret that the chain's website doesn't list its ingredients, only noting that it contains egg.

Though the company has been tight-lipped about the exact ingredients used to make the sauce, culinary sleuths have taken the challenge of coming up with copycats of their own and we may be closer to knowing the recipe than we realize.

With the Krabby Kollab Sauce, Wendy's taps into the fact that nostalgia can impact our eating behaviors, so any lovers of the show are prepped with fond memories before taking their first bite. Yet the taste of the secret sauce has been met with mixed reactions, with some netizens speculating the sauce is simply Thousand Island dressing. Voice actor Stefan Johnson reviewed the burger on TikTok and described the secret sauce's flavor like a tangy Big Mac sauce (a "secret sauce" inspired by Thousand Island) with added pepper. Other reviewers have agreed, describing the sauce as more peppery than savory.

Online DIY recipes mix spoonfuls of ketchup into a half cup of mayo and season the concoction with salt and pepper, garlic and onion powders, sprinkles of sugar and paprika, and teaspoons of lemon juice and vinegar. An alleged employee on Reddit posted a photo of said sauce packaged in plastic with a corresponding box-printed label detailing a list of ingredients that includes soybean oil, vinegar, sugar, tomato paste, egg yolks, and high fructose corn syrup. Whether this is the "real" sauce or not — we can't be certain unless Wendy's confirms — we'll let you decide if the Krabby Patty lives up to your Nickelodeon-watching fantasies.