2-nonenal
green aldehyde Key food odorantFound in 61 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.
Look up another compound — search by name, CAS number, PubChem CID, or FEMA #.
- Formula
- C9H16O
- Molecular weight
- 140.22 g/mol
- PubChem CID
- 5283335 — full record on PubChem
Key food odorant (generalist)
Dunkel et al. 2014Identified 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.
Properties
- Odor description
- fatty, green, cucumber, waxy, melon
- Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water
- 0.090 ppb – 0.600 ppb median 0.345 ppb · 2 published values · see all 22 with sources
- Volatility
- high
- CAS number
- 2463-53-8
- Retention index
- 1152
FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use
- FEMA number
- 3213
- GRAS publication
- GRAS 4
- FEMA primary name
- 2-NONENAL
Use-level matrix not extracted for this substance — check the source publication for current ppm guidance.
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.
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.
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
22 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
0.090 ppb – 0.600 ppbThe reference measurement — smelled in water. OAV is computed against this.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.090 ppb | water_odor | Leffingwell | — |
| 0.600 ppb | water/ethanol 6:4 (food: american bourbon whisky) | Literature corpus | — |
In a food matrix
0.080 ppb – 67.5 ppbMeasured in a real food, where the matrix shifts detection — not a clean-water value.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.080 ppb | water (food: wheat porridge / bread crumb) | Literature corpus | — |
| 0.140 ppb | water (food: melon) | Literature corpus | — |
| 0.190 ppb | water (food: green tea infusion (jingshan cha)) | Literature corpus | — |
| 0.400 ppb | water (food: rum) | Literature corpus | — |
| 0.424 ppb | water (food: rice) | Literature corpus | — |
| 0.640 ppb | water (food: apple) | Literature corpus | — |
| 0.690 ppb | water (food: beef vegetable gravy) | Literature corpus | — |
| 0.690 ppb | water (food: pork vegetable gravy) | Literature corpus | — |
| 0.690 ppb | water (food: reference standard (water)) | Literature corpus | — |
| 0.700 ppb | water (food: chocolate) | Literature corpus | — |
| 0.800 ppb | water (food: hand-squeezed grapefruit juice) | Literature corpus | — |
| 1.0 ppb | water (food: smoked cooked loin (pork)) | Literature corpus | — |
| 14.0 ppb | water (food: tea) | Literature corpus | — |
| 19.0 ppb | water (food: milk) | Literature corpus | — |
| 67.5 ppb | water (food: unknown) | Literature corpus | — |
| 83.0 ppb | water (food: soy sauce) | Literature corpus | — |
| Flagged: 119× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden. | |||
| 93.0 ppb | water (food: beef) | Literature corpus | — |
| Flagged: 133× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden. | |||
| 1136 ppb | water (food: tomato) | Literature corpus | — |
| Flagged: 1623× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden. | |||
| 1160 ppb | water (food: ginger) | Literature corpus | — |
| Flagged: 1657× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden. | |||
Retronasal / in-mouth
6.0 ppbTasted rather than smelled — a different sense, not comparable.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.0 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 (0.695 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 22 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.
| Food | Concentration (ppb) | OAV | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| corn | 9760.0 | 14043 ⚡ | — |
| beef | 1562.0 | 2247 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| tea | 1151.0 | 1656 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| tomato | 1145.0 | 1647 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| ham | 150.0 | 216 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| wheat | 61.7 | 88.8 ⚡ | PMID 36635423 |
| lamb | 56.2 | 80.8 ⚡ | PMID 36866058 |
| soybean | 43.0 | 61.9 ⚡ | PMID 37965015 |
| ginger | 24.3 | 34.9 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| bread | 9.0 | 12.9 ⚡ | PMID 38840722 |
| rum | 1.7 | 2.43 | Corpus paper |
| soybean sauce | 0.8 | 1.15 | — |
| grape | 0.2 | 0.27 | DOI |
| chocolate | 0.1 | 0.14 | Corpus paper |
| rice | 0.0 | 0.00 | 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 shareEvery ingredient known to contain 2-nonenal. 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-nonenal in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.
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