2,3-pentanedione

dairy ketone Key food odorant

Found in 84 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C5H8O2
Molecular weight: 100.12 g/mol
PubChem CID: 11747 — full record on PubChem

Key food odorant (intermediary)

Dunkel et al. 2014

Identified in the meta-analysis of 227 food samples as one of 57 intermediary odorants — appears in 5–25% of foods.

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

Properties

Odor description: butter, sweet, caramel
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 30.0 ppb 1 published value · see all 5 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 600-14-6
Retention index: 708

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 2841
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: 2,3-PENTANEDIONE

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.

butter, sweet, caramel shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

—

chemical FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

butter, caramel, cheese, cream, creamy, nutty, pungent, sweet FlavorDB 2.0

cream, butter, pungent, sweet, creamy, caramel, nutty, cheese FlavorDB 2.0

butter, chemical, cooked FlavorDB 2.0

sweet, creamy 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

5 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

30.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
30.0 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

In a food matrix

30.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
30.0 ppb	water (food: coffee)	Literature corpus	—

Retronasal / in-mouth

5.0 ppb

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

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

Other matrix

16.0 ppb – 97.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
16.0 ppb SIDA	starch	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
97.0 ppb SIDA	cellulose	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

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 (30.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 5 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
flour	20000.0	667 ⚡	DOI
crab	10000.0	333 ⚡	DOI
butter	31.0	1.03	PMID 35156905
coffee	0.1	0.00	PMID 22365196

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

198 cmpds

27 cmpds

34 cmpds

37 cmpds