If you're not smoking in a lab, spilling everywhere and accidentally taking heroic doses of unknown chemicals on a daily basis, you have no chance of uncovering new properties. Can you imagine how long it would have taken to get saccharine if cunts were wearing gloves?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame#HistoryYou better be sticking your fingers into every substance at every stage and feasting off them like Marco Pierre White.
So much of the work that chefs do is by accident too. How did I find out that almost all lemon and sugar with a teensy bit of coffee tastes great? Through accidentally condensing coffee vapour on the lid of a lemon sweet tin and eating the sweeties. There are countless more well known recipe invention stories on the same lines.
