1-pentanol

floral alcohol

Found in 107 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C5H12O
Molecular weight: 88.15 g/mol
PubChem CID: 6276 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: fusel, balsamic, sweet, oily
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 4000 ppb 1 published value · see all 6 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 71-41-0
Retention index: 765

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

? Partial match

FEMA number: 4792
GRAS publication: GRAS 27
CAS number: 548740-99-4
FEMA primary name: (±)-3-Mercapto-1-pentanol

Reported use levels (ppm by food category)

Typical vs maximum reported addition levels in finished food. Use as a regulatory ceiling reference — verify against the current GRAS publication for your product category.

Food category	Typical (ppm)	Maximum (ppm)
baked goods	2	10
beverages, non-alcoholic	1	6
breakfast cereals	1	8
chewing gum	3	10
frozen dairy	1	8
gravies	1	8
instant coffee and tea	1	8
jams and jellies	1	8
milk products	1	8
snack foods	1	6

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. 2 related FEMA records for this name — verify the exact substance for regulatory use.

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

amyl alcohol

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.

balsamic, sweet Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

—

caramel FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

balsamic, sweet, vanilla, fusel, oil, balsam FlavorDB 2.0

balsam, balsamic, fusel, oil, sweet, vanilla FlavorDB 2.0

bready, fermented, pine, camphor, caramel FlavorDB 2.0

berry 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

6 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

4000 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
4000 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

13.9 ppb – 4000 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
13.9 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	—
234 ppb	water (food: peanut)	Literature corpus	—
1272 ppb	water (food: beer)	Literature corpus	—
4000 ppb	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	—

In air

1288 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1288 ppb	air (C2_cometto_muniz_abraham)	Cometto-Muñiz (PMC)	—

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 (1272.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 6 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
milk powder	500000.0	393 ⚡	DOI
red wine	406000.0	319 ⚡	Corpus paper
grape	150275.0	118 ⚡	DOI
white wine	59800.0	47.0 ⚡	DOI
beer	1249.0	0.98	—
peanut	774.4	0.61	—
sunflower seed	630.0	0.50	PMID 31383910
bread	26.0	0.02	PMID 38840722
milk	10.0	0.01	PMID 39045306
olive	0.0	0.00	—
daqu	2.8	0.00	—

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-pentanol. 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-pentanol in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

red wine

measured · OAV 319.18

288 cmpds

457 cmpds

388 cmpds

363 cmpds