Alex studied the recipe for the pill he was going to make, trying to see if he could improve it at all without wasting a single bit of the ingredient.
Had he had the ingredients for the Blank Canvas pill, he could've made this all so much better, but finding the ingredients had been quite difficult for him at this point.
Alex continued learning as much as he could about the recipe and the ingredients, using everything in his memories and inheritance to try and come up with a somewhat better recipe. But unfortunately, he simply did not have that level of understanding regarding Alchemy just yet.
He could make some guesses, but he would have to test to see if he was right or not, and that was simply too risky at the moment.
The best option was to follow the pill recipe directly and make absolutely no changes at all.