Skip to main content

allyl isothiocyanate

savory sulfide

Found in 25 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis structure of allyl isothiocyanate
2D Lewis Structure
Formula
C4H5NS
Molecular weight
99.16 g/mol
PubChem CID
5971 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description
mustard, horseradish, pungent
Odor threshold — in a food matrix
884 ppb 1 published value · see all 1 with sources
Volatility
high
CAS number
57-06-7
Retention index
914
Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match
FEMA number
2034
GRAS publication
GRAS 3
FEMA primary name
ALLYL ISOTHIOCYANATE

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
allyl-isothiocyanate

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.

mustard, horseradish, pungent shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree
—
bitter, garlic, mustard, pungent, strong, sulfur FlavorDB 2.0
18
Mustard, Radish, Pungent FlavorDB 2.0
5
characteristic radish flavor 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.

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

884 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
884 ppb water (food: unknown) Literature corpus 24731297, 33995294

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

Food Concentration (ppb) OAV Source
cabbage 1049.8 1.67 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 allyl isothiocyanate. 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 allyl isothiocyanate in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

See all 25 ingredients with Pro

The inverted compound index is a Pro feature — reverse-search any of 5,240 flavor molecules across the full graph.

Into the chemistry?

Get a molecule-level pairing breakdown each week — which ingredients share a compound, and why it matters at the table. Free, no spam.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Try the pairing tools to see which ingredient combinations rely on allyl isothiocyanate, or compare two ingredients side-by-side.