acetoin

dairy ketone Key food odorant

Found in 118 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C4H8O2
Molecular weight: 88.11 g/mol
PubChem CID: 179 — full record on PubChem

Key food odorant (individualist)

Dunkel et al. 2014

Identified in the meta-analysis of 227 food samples as one of 151 individualist odorants — appears in <5% of foods, carries the diagnostic signature of specific ingredients.

Source: Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 7124–7143

Properties

Odor description: butter, cream, sweet
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 2900 ppb 1 published value · see all 11 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 513-86-0
Retention index: 1288

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 2008
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: ACETOIN

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

3-hydroxy-2-butanone

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.

butter, cream, sweet shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

—

creamy dairy sweet oily milky buttery FlavorDB 2.0

butter, buttery, cream, creamy, dairy, fatty, milky, sweet FlavorDB 2.0

creamy FlavorDB 2.0

attractant to slugs FlavorDB 2.0

creamy 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

11 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

2900 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
2900 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies	—

In a food matrix

0.530 ppb – 215 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.530 ppb	water (food: lime)	Literature corpus	30972045, 41048468
1.5 ppb	water (food: rice)	Literature corpus	41675126
2.0 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	22059567, 22416694, 31554058 +11
6.2 ppb	water (food: pork)	Literature corpus	39085314
6.9 ppb SIDA	water (food: onion)	Literature corpus	30779560, 22059567, 22416694 +22
45.0 ppb	water (food: lamb)	Literature corpus	22789457
215 ppb	water (food: peanut)	Literature corpus	41103313
778 ppb	water (food: tea)	Literature corpus	31861730
Flagged: 113× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden.
1281 ppb SIDA	water (food: bread)	Literature corpus	30779560, 28274420, 28490062 +1
Flagged: 186× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden.

Retronasal / in-mouth

100 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
100 ppb SIDA	water_retronasal	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.

Where you'd actually smell it

Odor Activity Value = measured concentration ÷ odor threshold (25.935 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 11 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
lime	1266.0	48.8 ⚡	Corpus paper
lamb	778.0	30.0 ⚡	Corpus paper
tea	778.0	30.0 ⚡	Corpus paper
peanut	746.9	28.8 ⚡	Corpus paper
onion	15.7	0.60	—
bread	1.0	0.04	—

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 acetoin. 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 acetoin in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

265 cmpds

617 cmpds

388 cmpds

369 cmpds