Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by aitchnyu 691 days ago
Does this mean all "secret" recipes have been useless IP protection for a long time?
1 comments

No, a mass spec can only give you a list of molecules, like a list of ingredients but after they’ve been cooked. It can’t give you the raw ingredients or the recipe.

Most soda is sugar water with a few well known synthetic flavors added so it’s easy to identify. Secret recipes like Coca Cola are far more complex to make without easy synthetic alternatives. Any recipe that caramelizes sugar, for example, is hard to reverse engineer.

Somebody should be able to build a Large language model of Molecules to ingredients.