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4-hydroxybenzaldehyde

green aldehyde

Found in 462 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis structure of 4-hydroxybenzaldehyde
2D Lewis Structure
Formula
C7H6O2
Molecular weight
122.12 g/mol
PubChem CID
126 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description
almond, balsam, nutty, sweet, woody
Odor threshold — in a food matrix
0.120 ppb 1 published value · see all 1 with sources
Volatility
high
CAS number
123-08-0
Retention index
1393
Not in FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. Of 3,367 listed flavoring substances, none match this compound name. May still be food-safe under other regulatory routes (FDA 21 CFR 172, EFSA, JECFA) — check femaflavor.org for the authoritative current list.

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, balsam, nutty, sweet, woody shown above FlavorDB 2.0
429
CREAMY, MUSTY, NUTTY, VANILLA, HONEY FlavorDB 2.0
33
sweet nutty almond balsam woody Flavordb Odor Column
—

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

0.120 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
0.120 ppb water (food: unknown) 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.

Where you'd actually smell it

Odor Activity Value = measured concentration ÷ odor threshold (0.12 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 1 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food Concentration (ppb) OAV Source
hemp protein product 9190.0 76583 ⚡ Corpus paper

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 4-hydroxybenzaldehyde. 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 4-hydroxybenzaldehyde in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

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