The First Published Buffalo Wing Recipe: When America Learned to Make Wings

The Craig Claiborne Moment: 1983

Craig Claiborne (1920–2000) was the New York Times food critic and food editor from 1957 to 1986. In this role, he shaped American food culture more than any other food writer of his era — the NYT food section was the authoritative national publication for food, and Claiborne's endorsement could make a regional dish nationally known.

His 1983 coverage of buffalo chicken wings — written after experiencing the dish in Buffalo and recognizing its national potential — had several specific effects:

• National legitimization: A dish covered in the New York Times food section was understood as nationally significant. Readers across the country who had never visited Buffalo now knew the dish existed and had a recipe to reproduce it at home.
• The recipe standardization effect: When Claiborne published the recipe, he necessarily had to codify the preparation. The specific combination he described — split chicken wing sections, deep-fried, tossed in a mixture of hot sauce and butter — became the canonical written recipe. This codification helped standardize the preparation as the dish spread.
• Food professional attention: Restaurant owners, chefs, and food industry professionals read the NYT food section. Claiborne's coverage signaled to the food industry that buffalo wings were a viable commercial product worth adding to menus nationally. The chain restaurant adoption that followed in the mid-1980s was in part driven by food industry professionals who had become aware of the dish through food media like the Times.
• The timing alignment: 1983 was also approximately when TGI Friday's added buffalo wings to their national menu. The food media attention and chain restaurant adoption were mutually reinforcing — the article generated consumer awareness while the chain restaurants provided the access to act on that awareness.

Before the Recipe Was Published: 1964–1983

The nineteen years between the dish's creation and its first major national publication are worth understanding:

• Local newspaper coverage: Buffalo-area newspapers covered the Anchor Bar and its wings in the years following the dish's creation. Local food writers recognized the dish's quality and local significance. This coverage is the earliest documented written treatment of buffalo wings as a dish.
• Word of mouth: Before the Claiborne piece, the primary mechanism for buffalo wing knowledge transmission was direct experience. People ate wings in Buffalo, told others, and the recipe spread through personal networks. The recipe itself required no special equipment or difficult technique — anyone who knew the two-ingredient formula could reproduce it.
• The oral recipe tradition: "Frank's RedHot and butter" is the kind of recipe that travels by telling rather than by written documentation. Its simplicity means it doesn't require a written recipe to transmit accurately — someone tells you the two ingredients and the ratio, and you can make it. This oral transmission explains how the recipe spread to other Buffalo-area establishments for nearly two decades without requiring print documentation.
• Early culinary travel writing: Food travel writers who visited Buffalo in the 1970s occasionally mentioned wings in travel pieces, but without the full recipe development that Claiborne would provide. These earlier mentions built awareness without creating the recipe documentation that enables home replication.

How the Published Recipe Standardized the Dish

The process by which a published recipe standardizes a dish is well-documented in food history:

• The canonical text effect: When a respected publication documents a recipe, it creates an authoritative version that subsequent publishers, cooks, and restaurateurs reference. Home cooks who learned to make buffalo wings from the Claiborne recipe made what he described; restaurants that added wings to menus approximated his published formula. The original variations across Buffalo establishments (slightly different ratios, different preparation details) were compressed into the single published version.
• The two-ingredient simplicity advantage: A recipe as simple as "hot sauce + butter" standardizes more durably than complex recipes because there's less room for interpretation. The main variable — ratio — was captured in Claiborne's description, and while individual cooks adjust it, the fundamental recipe hasn't drifted from the original.
• The Frank's RedHot specificity: Claiborne's recipe specifically named Frank's RedHot (or the equivalent product). This specificity locked in Frank's brand position in the buffalo wing recipe in a way that has persisted — recipes published today still predominantly list Frank's as the hot sauce. Any other aged cayenne sauce will produce a similar result, but Frank's is the published default.
• Subsequent cookbook appearances: After the 1983 Times coverage, buffalo wings appeared with increasing frequency in cookbooks from the mid-1980s onward. American party food cookbooks, sports bar cookbooks, and general American cooking references all included buffalo wing recipes, further standardizing the preparation and embedding it in the cultural repertoire of American home cooking.

How Variations Emerged From the Standardized Recipe

The single published recipe became the base from which documented variations emerged:

• Heat level variations: The most immediate variation was heat intensity — more hot sauce, less butter for hotter versions; more butter, less hot sauce for milder. The Anchor Bar's own heat level scale (Mild, Medium, Hot, Suicidal) provided a framework that restaurants nationally adopted, with the same base recipe producing different intensities.
• Garlic and additional seasoning: Adding garlic powder, onion powder, Worcestershire sauce, or cayenne directly to the sauce produced garlic buffalo variants that became their own category. Garlic buffalo is now a standard wing sauce option alongside plain buffalo at most establishments.
• Honey buffalo: Adding honey to the classic formula to create a sweet-heat sauce appeared in recipe documentation by the late 1980s and became one of the most popular buffalo variations. The resulting sauce is technically a honey buffalo rather than classic buffalo but is often filed under the same menu category.
• Ranch alternatives: The published recipe specified blue cheese as the accompaniment (following Anchor Bar tradition). Ranch dressing as an alternative accompaniment is not a recipe variation but a service variation that became so common nationally that many published recipes now offer both as options.