@syveria indeed, it’s really interesting and notoriously difficult. Patents must be “novel, non-obvious, and useful”. The result of mixing of most ingredients is pretty obvious. You need a formula that is surprising, like “red + blue = the color of magic”. Usually the companies patent things around the recipe like tools and processes.

Although even then food companies hesitate. The deal with patents is that to get one, you have to essentially teach everyone how you did it, and the patent eventually expires. If your security is good enough, you can keep a trade secret forever.