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3-octanol

floral alcohol

Found in 79 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis structure of 3-octanol
2D Lewis Structure
Formula
C8H18O
Molecular weight
130.23 g/mol
PubChem CID
11527 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description
mushroom, earthy, musty, herbal
Odor threshold — in a food matrix
997 ppb 1 published value · see all 1 with sources
Volatility
high
CAS number
589-98-0
Retention index
1026
Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match
FEMA number
3581
GRAS publication
GRAS 11
FEMA primary name
3-OCTANOL

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.

moss, nut, mushroom Flavornet Cas
—
camphor, pine, chemical FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
2
menthol FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
1
honey FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
1
citrus, earthy, herbal, melon, minty, moss, mushroom, nut, spicy, woody FlavorDB 2.0
55
Musty, mushroom, earthy, creamy dairy FlavorDB 2.0
12

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

997 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
997 ppb water (food: unknown) Literature corpus 20548795

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 (507.5 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 1 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food Concentration (ppb) OAV Source
beer 500000.0 985 ⚡ PMID 33195145
whey 100000.0 197 ⚡ DOI
grape 75000.0 148 ⚡ PMID 21871629
mustard 32750.0 64.5 ⚡ PMID 33995294
apricot 10000.0 19.7 ⚡ PMID 35350414
mushroom 0.0 0.00 —

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 share

Every ingredient known to contain 3-octanol. 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-octanol in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

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