alpha-phellandrene

herbal terpene Key food odorant

Found in 81 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

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: citrus, terpene, green, peppery, minty
Odor threshold — in a food matrix: 0.465 ppb – 6.6 ppb median 3.6 ppb · 4 published values · see all 5 with sources
CAS number: 99-83-2
Retention index: 1063

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 2856
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: a-PHELLANDRENE

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.

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.

citrus, green, herbal, mint, peppery, spice, terpene, turpentine, woody FlavorDB 2.0

Terpenic, citrus lime with a fresh green note FlavorDB 2.0

citrus, terpene, green, peppery, minty shown above Llm Adjudicated

—

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

5 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

0.465 ppb – 6.6 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.465 ppb	water (food: lemon)	Literature corpus	40673157
0.520 ppb	water (food: grape)	Literature corpus	40673157
6.6 ppb	water (food: lamb)	Literature corpus	40673157
1000 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	40673157
Flagged: 281× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden.

In air

0.700 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.700 ppb	air (food: dill herb)	Literature corpus	40673157

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 (3.5599999999999996 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 5 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
grape	20.2	5.68	—
rum	17.0	4.77	—
lamb	6.9	1.94	—
lemon	1.0	0.28	—

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 alpha-phellandrene. 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 alpha-phellandrene in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

365 cmpds

12 cmpds

12 cmpds

25 cmpds