anethol

Key food odorant

Found in 1 ingredient 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: anise, chemical, camphor, pine
Odor threshold — in a food matrix: 15.0 ppb – 35.6 ppb median 25.3 ppb · 2 published values · see all 2 with sources
CAS number: 4180-23-8
Retention index: 1288

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

? Partial match

FEMA number: 2086
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: ANETHOLE

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.

anise, chemical, camphor, pine shown above FlavorDB 2.0

anise, chemical Flavordb Odor Column

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camphor, pine Flavordb Odor Column

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anise Flavordb Odor Column

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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

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

15.0 ppb – 35.6 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
15.0 ppb	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	—
35.6 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	—

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

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
herbal tea	83.2	3.29	—
grape	0.2	0.01	—
chocolate	0.3	0.01	—

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

liver

Meat

268 cmpds

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