The great Danish coke off
Can forensics identify a drug kingpin’s cocaine signature?
If the same recipe is used by different chefs, will you get the same result? Professional chefs, amateur kitchen warriors and fans of The Great British Bake Off know the answer – no. There’s another set of people that know this to be true – chemists. Getting consistent results takes a lot of work. One has to control for reactants and reagents, instrumentation, personnel training, process adherence, storage… the list goes on. Trifle or triflate, a specific user can control a recipe’s result to such an extent it could point to a particular individual. The same goes for illegal chemists, their recipes and the clandestine drugs they produce.