3-methyl-2-butenal

green aldehyde

Found in 444 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C5H8O
Molecular weight: 84.12 g/mol
PubChem CID: 61020 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: fruity, sweet, nutty, cherry, almond
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 320 ppb 1 published value · see all 3 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 107-86-8
Retention index: 1175

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 3646
GRAS publication: GRAS 12
FEMA primary name: 3-METHYL-2-BUTENAL

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.

almond, brown, cherry, fruity, nutty, pungent, sweet FlavorDB 2.0

383

Sweet, fruity and green with a nutty and cherry background FlavorDB 2.0

fruity, sweet, nutty, cherry, almond 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

3 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

320 ppb

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

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

In a food matrix

1200 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1200 ppb	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	—

Other matrix

24000 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
24000 ppb	ethanol/water 40/60 (food: rum (aged))	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-methyl-2-butenal. 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-butenal in it.

35 cmpds

43 cmpds

83 cmpds

83 cmpds