2-ethylhexanoic acid

dairy acid

Found in 4 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

Properties

Odor description: fatty, cheesy, sweaty, rancid
Odor threshold: 20000.0 ppb (1 source, non-SIDA)
CAS number: 149-57-5
Retention index: 1096

Not in FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. Of 3,367 listed flavoring substances, none match this compound name. May still be food-safe under other regulatory routes (FDA 21 CFR 172, EFSA, JECFA) — check femaflavor.org for the authoritative current list.

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.

fatty FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

solvent, chemical FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

cheesy, sweaty, rancid, fatty, pungent, floral, green, sweet, rose FlavorDB 2.0

fatty, cheesy, sweaty, rancid shown above Llm Adjudicated

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floral, green, sweet, rose, sweaty Flavordb Odor Column

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cheesy, sweaty, rancid, fatty, pungent 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.

Where you'd actually smell it

Odor Activity Value = measured concentration ÷ odor threshold (20000.0 ppb). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
veal	38400.0	1.92	PMID 31484956

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-ethylhexanoic acid. 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-ethylhexanoic acid in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

407 cmpds

201 cmpds

268 cmpds

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