[chef] how scrub client info out of recipes and cookbooks but also preserve commit history?

[Bryan Berry < >]

perhaps this is a dumb question, but is there is a straightforward way to scrub my recipes and cookbooks of references to a particular customer and at the same time maintain commit history? For example, say I have 1 recipe popular_framework that has references to a customer's internal infrastructure. Over time I will make changes to that recipe. How can I preserve the commit history as I merge those changes into my public github recipe but filter out anything specific to the customer?