3-mercapto-2-butanone

savory sulfide

Found in 7 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C4H8OS
Molecular weight: 104.17 g/mol
PubChem CID: 38679 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: onion
Odor threshold: 62500.0 ppb (1 source, non-SIDA)
Volatility: high
CAS number: 40789-98-8
Retention index: 816

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 3298
GRAS publication: GRAS 5
FEMA primary name: 3-Mercapto-2-butanone

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.

onion shown above Flavornet Cas

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Very powerful eggy roasted meaty and dairy notes 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.

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain 3-mercapto-2-butanone. 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 3-mercapto-2-butanone in it.

120 cmpds

257 cmpds

344 cmpds

388 cmpds