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acrolein

green aldehyde

Found in 389 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis structure of acrolein
2D Lewis Structure
Formula
C3H4O
Molecular weight
56.06 g/mol
PubChem CID
7847 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description
almond, cherry
Odor threshold — in a food matrix
28.7 ppb 1 published value · see all 2 with sources
Volatility
high
CAS number
107-02-8
Retention index
832
Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

? Partial match
FEMA number
2494
GRAS publication
GRAS 3
FEMA primary name
FURYL ACROLEIN-2-Furanacrolein

Use-level matrix not extracted for this substance — check the source publication for current ppm guidance.

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. 3 related FEMA records for this name — verify the exact substance for regulatory use.

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
2-propenal

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

Published thresholds

2 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.

In a food matrix

28.7 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
28.7 ppb water (food: unknown) Literature corpus 35071288, 39684087, 40761387

In air

3.6 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
3.6 ppb air Nagata 2003 —

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 (28.72 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 2 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food Concentration (ppb) OAV Source
french fries 6500.0 226 ⚡ 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 acrolein. 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 acrolein in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

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