2-methylbutyraldehyde

green aldehyde Key food odorant

Found in 473 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C5H10O
Molecular weight: 86.13 g/mol
PubChem CID: 7284 — full record on PubChem

Key food odorant (generalist)

Dunkel et al. 2014

Identified in the meta-analysis of 227 food samples as one of 16 generalist odorants — appears in >25% of foods, typically from generic Maillard, lipid-oxidation, or fermentation pathways. Characteristic odor: malty.

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

Properties

Odor description: malty, chocolate, almond, nutty
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 1.0 ppb – 2.4 ppb median 1.7 ppb · 2 published values · see all 16 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 96-17-3
Retention index: 662

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

~ Likely match

FEMA number: 2691
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: 2-METHYLBUTYRALDEHYDE-2-Methylbutanal

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

2-methyl butanal 2-methyl-butanal 2-methylbutanal 2-methylbutanal-m

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, chocolate, almond Flavornet Cas

—

almond, cocoa, coffee, musty, nutty FlavorDB 2.0

424

cocoa aroma FlavorDB 2.0

malty, chocolate, almond, nutty shown above Llm Adjudicated

—

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

16 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

1.0 ppb – 2.4 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1.0 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—
2.4 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies	—

In a food matrix

1.0 ppb – 4.4 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: extruded wheat flour)	Literature corpus	—
1.5 ppb	water (food: green tea infusion (jingshan cha))	Literature corpus	—
1.5 ppb	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	—
1.5 ppb	water (food: longjing green tea infusion)	Literature corpus	—
4.4 ppb	water (food: japanese soy sauce)	Literature corpus	—

Retronasal / in-mouth

0.900 ppb – 15.6 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.900 ppb SIDA	water_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
15.6 ppb SIDA	oil_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies	—

Other matrix

10.0 ppb – 140 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
10.0 ppb SIDA	oil_orthonasal	Rychlik 1998 · 3 studies	—
21.0 ppb SIDA	cellulose	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
32.0 ppb SIDA	starch	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
33.0 ppb	ethanol/water 40/60 (food: rum (aged))	Literature corpus	—
33.0 ppb	ethanol/water 40/60 (food: rum (young))	Literature corpus	—
140 ppb	oil (sunflower oil) (food: cocoa beans)	Literature corpus	—
140 ppb	oil (sunflower oil) (food: cocoa powder)	Literature corpus	—

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 (1.5 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 16 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
brie	217570.0	145047 ⚡	PMID 33431770
barley	100000.0	66667 ⚡	DOI
flour	20000.0	13333 ⚡	DOI
sourdough	15490.0	10327 ⚡	DOI
extra virgin olive oil	8000.0	5333 ⚡	Corpus paper
lard	200.0	133 ⚡	PMID 25036492
cheese	32.1	21.4 ⚡	PMID 39360317
coffee	20.0	13.3 ⚡	Corpus paper

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

brie

measured · OAV 145046.67

32 cmpds

barley

measured · OAV 66666.67

357 cmpds

sourdough

measured · OAV 10326.67

211 cmpds

cheese

measured · OAV 21.39

295 cmpds