1-nonanol

floral alcohol

Found in 129 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

Look up another compound — search by name, CAS number, PubChem CID, or FEMA #.

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C9H20O
Molecular weight: 144.25 g/mol
PubChem CID: 8914 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: fatty, green, floral, rose, waxy
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 50.0 ppb 1 published value · see all 8 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 143-08-8
Retention index: 1367

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: None
GRAS publication: GRAS 2
FEMA primary name: 1-Nonanol

Use-level matrix not extracted for this substance — check the source publication for current ppm guidance.

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33.

How this molecule is described

Sources disagree about odour more often than they disagree about chemistry. Rather than show one answer, here is every description on file with how many ingredient records carry it.

Also filed as

nonanol

Same molecule, unified here — previously counted and displayed as separate compounds.

Descriptions on file

Ordered by how many independent descriptor streams give each wording, then by how often it appears. The bar is still replication — one source copied onto many ingredients scores high there — so the two can disagree.

fat, green Flavornet Cas

—

chemical FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

bitter, clean, dusty, fat, fatty, floral, fresh, green, oily, orange, rose, wet FlavorDB 2.0

113

fat, green, fresh, clean, fatty, floral, rose, orange, dusty, wet, oily, bitter FlavorDB 2.0

butter, camphor, chemical FlavorDB 2.0

fruity, floral, herbal FlavorDB 2.0

Bars are the share of ingredient records carrying each description. High agreement means the sources replicate each other — not necessarily that they are right.

Published thresholds

8 measured values from the literature. Grouped by what was actually measured — a threshold smelled in clean water, tasted in the mouth, or measured in a real food are three different quantities and are not pooled.

Orthonasal, in clean water

50.0 ppb

The reference measurement — smelled in water. OAV is computed against this.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
50.0 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

0.200 ppb – 97.0 ppb

Measured in a real food, where the matrix shifts detection — not a clean-water value.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.010 ppb	water (food: grape)	Literature corpus	15740053, 23122094
Flagged: 705× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden.
0.200 ppb	water (food: rice)	Literature corpus	26973621
2.1 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	38229866, 40366211
12.0 ppb	water (food: honey)	Literature corpus	19326859
97.0 ppb	water (food: soy sauce)	Literature corpus	17898513
1103 ppb	water (food: lime)	Literature corpus	24789719
Flagged: 156× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden.

In air

0.900 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.900 ppb	air	Nagata 2003	—

Only values we can attribute are listed. Where a compendium's licence does not permit public attribution its figures are omitted here, so every number on this page traces to a citable source.

Where you'd actually smell it

Odor Activity Value = measured concentration ÷ odor threshold (31.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 8 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
blueberry	60000.0	1935 ⚡	DOI
gelatin	10000.0	323 ⚡	Corpus paper
olive	2000.0	64.5 ⚡	PMID 34073901
mushroom	50.0	1.61	—
coffee	43.3	1.40	—
honey	2.0	0.06	—
soybean sauce	1.4	0.05	—
grape	0.2	0.01	—
rice	0.3	0.01	—

Concentrations from PubMed Central Open Access papers (free literature corpus, MIT-style licensed). Copper = OAV ≥ 10 (strongly perceptible). Green = OAV ≥ 1 (perceptible).

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain 1-nonanol. Ingredients with a measured concentration come first, ranked by odour activity; the rest follow by how large a share of that ingredient's profile this molecule is. The figure beside each is how many different compounds that ingredient has in total — not the concentration of 1-nonanol in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

blueberry

measured · OAV 1935.48

322 cmpds

370 cmpds

434 cmpds

364 cmpds