2,6-dimethoxyphenol

spicy phenol Key food odorant

Found in 16 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C8H10O3
Molecular weight: 154.16 g/mol
PubChem CID: 7041 — 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: smoky, phenolic, medicinal, woody, sweet
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 1850 ppb 1 published value · see all 5 with sources
Volatility: medium
CAS number: 91-10-1

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 3137
GRAS publication: GRAS 4
FEMA primary name: 2,6-DIMETHOXYPHENOL

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

syringol

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.

smoky, phenolic, sweet Flavornet Cas

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bacon, balsamic, medicine, phenol, phenolic, powdery, smoke, smoky, woody FlavorDB 2.0

Sweet, medicinal, creamy, meaty, vanilla, spice FlavorDB 2.0

almond, camphor, pine, chemical FlavorDB 2.0

smoky, phenolic, medicinal, woody, sweet shown above Llm Adjudicated

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chemical Flavordb Odor Column

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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

1850 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1850 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

3.0 ppb – 164 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
3.0 ppb	water (food: tea)	Literature corpus	—
12.5 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	—
164 ppb	water (food: wine)	Literature corpus	—

Retronasal / in-mouth

1650 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1650 ppb	water_flavor	Leffingwell	—

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

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
wine	136.6	1.54	Corpus paper
tea	23.2	0.26	Corpus paper
vanilla	1.0	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 2,6-dimethoxyphenol. 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 2,6-dimethoxyphenol in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

565 cmpds

617 cmpds

26 cmpds

47 cmpds