The $250 Cookie Recipe Exposed

BY now, almost everybody has heard the one about the woman and her daughter lunching at the ''Neiman Marcus Cafe'' in Dallas, who enjoyed the chocolate chip cookies so much that they asked for the recipe. For ''only two-fifty,'' the waitress said, it was theirs. But when the charge card bill arrived, the amazed woman found the total near $300. Hard to understand, since she had bought a $20 scarf, two $9.95 salads and a cookie recipe.

Turns out the recipe cost $250, the story goes. When the woman couldn't get her money back, she took revenge, sending the recipe by E-mail to all her friends and asking them to pass it on. The recipe for what was dubbed the Justice Cookie and the Ultimate Revenge Cookie has been around the world and back.

The truth is that there is no Neiman Marcus Cafe, good luck finding a $20 scarf at that exclusive department store, and its restaurants have never sold chocolate chip cookies. At least, not until last March.

After years of enduring the myth, Neiman Marcus has come up with a chocolate chip cookie recipe of its own and posted it on its Web site (www.neimanmarcus.com). The recipe, mercifully, makes only 12 to 15 large cookies -- the original revenge cookie recipe makes 110 (the recipe here is for 55).

''We would never, ever charge for a recipe,'' said Kellie Patrick, the media relations manager for Neiman Marcus. ''We gladly give our recipes away for the asking.''

On the store's Web page -- click on the cookie icon -- Neiman Marcus traces the tale back to at least the 1930's, when a similar story circulated about the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. That recipe was for Red Velvet Cake, and the reported charge was $100.