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2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine

roasted pyrazine Key food odorant

Found in 73 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis structure of 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine
2D Lewis Structure
Formula
C7H10N2
Molecular weight
122.17 g/mol
PubChem CID
26808 — full record on PubChem

Key food odorant (individualist)

Dunkel et al. 2014

Identified in the meta-analysis of 227 food samples as one of 151 individualist odorants — appears in <5% of foods, carries the diagnostic signature of specific ingredients.

Source: Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 7124–7143

Properties

Odor description
cocoa, roasted, peanut
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water
246 ppb – 1100 ppb median 673 ppb · 2 published values · see all 10 with sources
Volatility
high
CAS number
14667-55-1
Retention index
1252
Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match
FEMA number
3244
GRAS publication
GRAS 4
FEMA primary name
2,3,5-TRIMETHYLPYRAZINE

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.

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.

cocoa, roasted, peanut shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 4 sources agree
8
corn FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
1
cocoa, earthy, hazelnut, must, musty, nutty, peanut, potato, powdery, roast, roasted FlavorDB 2.0
60
caramel, roasted, potato, corn, hazelnut, coffee, cooked FlavorDB 2.0
2
roasted, sweet, cucumber FlavorDB 2.0
1
roasty, nutty, earthy FlavorDB 2.0
1

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

10 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

246 ppb – 1100 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
246 ppb SIDA water Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies —
1100 ppb water_odor Leffingwell —

In a food matrix

2.8 ppb – 1388 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
0.070 ppb water (food: rum) Literature corpus —
Flagged: 901× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden.
2.8 ppb water (food: unknown) Literature corpus —
3.0 ppb water (food: sesame) Literature corpus —
123 ppb water (food: baijiu) Literature corpus —
1041 ppb water (food: tea) Literature corpus —
1388 ppb water (food: beef) Literature corpus —

Retronasal / in-mouth

71.0 ppb

Tasted rather than smelled — a different sense, not comparable.

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
71.0 ppb SIDA water_retronasal Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies —

Other matrix

290 ppb

Measured in a non-aqueous medium (oil, starch, cellulose).

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
290 ppb oil (sunflower oil) (food: cocoa beans) Literature corpus —

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 (123.1 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 10 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food Concentration (ppb) OAV Source
lard 35000.0 284 ⚡ PMID 31304252

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 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine. 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 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

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