3-methyl-2,4-nonanedione

fruity ketone

Found in 10 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C10H18O2
Molecular weight: 170.25 g/mol
PubChem CID: 529481 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: straw, hay, dried fruit, fruity
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 0.030 ppb 1 published value · see all 7 with sources
Volatility: medium
CAS number: 113486-29-6

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 4057
GRAS publication: GRAS 21
FEMA primary name: 3-METHYL-2,4-NONANEDIONE

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.

straw, fruit Flavornet Cas

—

straw, fruit, fruity, caramel, burnt FlavorDB 2.0

anise, dried fruit FlavorDB 2.0

prunes, oxidized flavor, dried fruit, rancio FlavorDB 2.0

beany and green off-odor FlavorDB 2.0

strong aroma 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

7 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

0.030 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.030 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

In a food matrix

0.046 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.046 ppb	water (food: green tea infusion (jingshan cha))	Literature corpus	—
0.046 ppb	water (food: longjing green tea infusion)	Literature corpus	—

Retronasal / in-mouth

0.020 ppb – 1.5 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.020 ppb SIDA	water_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
1.5 ppb SIDA	oil_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

Other matrix

1.5 ppb – 22.5 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1.5 ppb SIDA	cellulose	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
22.5 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.

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain 3-methyl-2,4-nonanedione. 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-methyl-2,4-nonanedione in it.

31 cmpds

90 cmpds

104 cmpds

288 cmpds