2-heptanone

fruity ketone

Found in 156 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C7H14O
Molecular weight: 114.19 g/mol
PubChem CID: 8051 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: fruity, blue cheese, spicy, banana
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 29.0 ppb – 1570 ppb median 800 ppb · 2 published values · see all 11 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 110-43-0
Retention index: 894

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 2544
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: 2-HEPTANONE

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.

banana, fruity, sweet Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

—

cinnamon, coconut, fruity, herbal, soap, spicy, sweet, woody FlavorDB 2.0

Very characteristic blue cheese note FlavorDB 2.0

fruity FlavorDB 2.0

creamy FlavorDB 2.0

oxidative 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

11 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

29.0 ppb – 1570 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
29.0 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 3 studies	—
1570 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

1.0 ppb – 514 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1.0 ppb	water (food: goat milk)	Literature corpus	—
6.0 ppb	water (food: fish)	Literature corpus	—
160 ppb	water (food: wine)	Literature corpus	—
514 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	—

Retronasal / in-mouth

1000 ppb – 1500 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1000 ppb	water_flavor	Leffingwell	—
1500 ppb SIDA	oil_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

In air

4.8 ppb – 6.8 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
4.8 ppb	air (C2_cometto_muniz_abraham)	Cometto-Muñiz (PMC)	—
6.8 ppb	air	Nagata 2003	—

Other matrix

1500 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1500 ppb SIDA	oil_orthonasal	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 (94.5 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 11 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
blue-veined cheese	1000.0	10.6 ⚡	Corpus paper
fish	2.0	0.02	Corpus paper
wine	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-heptanone. 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-heptanone in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

158 cmpds

565 cmpds

19 cmpds

23 cmpds