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3-mercaptohexanol

savory thiol

Found in 4 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis structure of 3-mercaptohexanol
2D Lewis Structure
Formula
C6H14OS
Molecular weight
134.24 g/mol
PubChem CID
521348 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description
tropical, grapefruit, passion fruit
Odor threshold — in a food matrix
0.060 ppb 1 published value · see all 1 with sources
Volatility
high
CAS number
51755-83-0
Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match
FEMA number
3850
GRAS publication
GRAS 18
FEMA primary name
3-MERCAPTOHEXANOL

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.

tropical, grapefruit, passion fruit shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree
—
onion-like FlavorDB 2.0
1
fruity, polyfunctional mercaptan FlavorDB 2.0
1
tropical/citrus fruit FlavorDB 2.0
1
sulfur, sulfurous, fruity, tropical FlavorDB 2.0
1

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

1 measured value 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

0.060 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
0.060 ppb water (food: pink guava) 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.

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain 3-mercaptohexanol. 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-mercaptohexanol in it.

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