this is really two questions in one:
\-how are manmade chemicals made ??? what are they even made of ??
\-how do they make chemicals targeted for a specific reason like making a vanilla scent or pain reliever ?
In: Chemistry
It’s kind of gross but the way it literally works is they create somewhat random non-toxic compounds with chemical structures that resemble various natural flavors and then they taste them and see if they taste good. Like for example there is no such thing as a blue raspberry but it’s a well known artificial flavor. Also, artificial banana flavor actually tastes very little like real bananas – but people still like it so it’s popularly produced and often used in products that aren’t even marketed as banana flavored, like “pink bubble gum”.
It heavily depends, because there’s as many manufacturing requirements as there are chemical compounds.
Some are just made in straight up chemical synthesis from simpler molecules.
Some are made by modifications of molecules that are similar.
Some are made by having microbes (sometimes specially modified ones) make them for us.
And some are just straight up taken from the natural source, because fucking around with chemistry is just way more work than it’s worth.
The last one I have personal experience with in pharmaceuticals, with antivenom. The way you make antivenom is you inject sheep with the venom, and let them make it for you. Then you extract blood (not enough to harm them), and go through many many filtrations to end up with the pure antivenom.
With flavours, some are really simple, like cherry. They’re made up of just a few (single digits) compounds that might even be easy to synthesise.
Some other, like meaty flavours (beef, chicken, pork), are made from yeast and soy by chemically modifying them in fairly straightforward but specific ways.
Then you have stuff like chocolate, mushroom, apple, various spices. Nobody bothers synthesising those. You just take the real deal and use it in your mix.
Chemicals are made by using precursors that can be gotten from the environment or themselves made.
Most medicines are modified versions (or even identical) of chemicals found in plants. People traditionally found that willow bark helped with headaches, we found that it was the acetylsalicylic acid inside. What we commonly call aspirin.
If we can, we extract it from the plant and refine it. Because cells are much better at making chemicals than humans are. They have had billions of years of trial and error. So for morphine and heroin, we extract it from poppy seeds.
However sometimes it is too difficult, or not enough can be made so we synthesise it. For the example of aspirin, we synthesise it by reacting salicylic acid and acetyl chloride. We make these chemicals through a complex reaction with lots of other chemicals. Eventually reaching the point where you have something readily available in nature such as salts, water, ethanol (from yeast) and such.
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