2-furanmethanol

caramel furan

Found in 28 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

Properties

Odor description: burnt, caramel, sweet, bready
Odor threshold — in a food matrix: 31.8 ppb – 1678 ppb median 444 ppb · 3 published values · see all 4 with sources
CAS number: 98-00-0
Retention index: 859

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.

Also filed as

2-furan methanol

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.

malty FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

burnt, alcoholic, chemical, musty, sweet, caramel, bread, coffee, bitter FlavorDB 2.0

burnt, malty, mushroom, oily, pine, clove, anise, butter FlavorDB 2.0

floral, sweet, woody, green FlavorDB 2.0

sweet-caramel FlavorDB 2.0

fermented 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

4 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.

In a food matrix

31.8 ppb – 1678 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
31.8 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	28864886, 40366211
444 ppb	water (food: bread)	Literature corpus	28274420, 38519512
1678 ppb	water (food: wine)	Literature corpus	28274420, 28864886, 38519512 +1

Retronasal / in-mouth

5000 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
5000 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 (443.9045 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 4 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
grape	53000.0	119 ⚡	PMID 29415459
baijiu	720.0	1.62	PMID 41190275
bread	180.0	0.41	PMID 38840722

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

201 cmpds

24 cmpds

24 cmpds

26 cmpds