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5-methylfurfural

caramel furan

Found in 90 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis structure of 5-methylfurfural
2D Lewis Structure
Formula
C6H6O2
Molecular weight
110.11 g/mol
PubChem CID
12097 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description
caramel, sweet, maple
Odor threshold
16000.0 ppb (1 source, non-SIDA)
Volatility
high
CAS number
620-02-0
Retention index
967
Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match
FEMA number
2702
GRAS publication
GRAS 3
FEMA primary name
5-METHYLFURFURAL

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.

Also filed as
5-methyl-furfural

Same molecule, unified here — previously counted and displayed as separate compounds.

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.

caramel, sweet, maple shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 4 sources agree
13
chemical FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
1
solvent FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
1
sweet, burnt FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
1
almond, burnt sugar, caramel, maple, spice FlavorDB 2.0
68
smoky, toasty 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.

Where you'd actually smell it

Odor Activity Value = measured concentration ÷ odor threshold (16000.0 ppb). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food Concentration (ppb) OAV Source
brandy 100.0 0.01 —
grape 50.0 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 5-methylfurfural. 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 5-methylfurfural in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

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