butan-1-ol

floral alcohol Key food odorant

Found in 3 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. Characteristic odor: alcoholic.

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

Properties

Odor description: fruity, floral, green, roasty, roasted, chemical
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 500 ppb – 890 ppb median 695 ppb · 2 published values · see all 8 with sources
CAS number: 71-36-3
Retention index: 1138

Not in FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. Of 3,367 listed flavoring substances, none match this compound name. May still be food-safe under other regulatory routes (FDA 21 CFR 172, EFSA, JECFA) — check femaflavor.org for the authoritative current list.

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.

fruity, floral, green, roasty, roasted, chemical shown above FlavorDB 2.0

chemical, fruity, butter, creamy, peach, onion FlavorDB 2.0

chemical Flavordb Odor Column

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fruity, floral, green, roasty, roasted Flavordb Odor Column

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fruity, butter, creamy, peach, onion Flavordb Odor Column

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fruity 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

8 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

500 ppb – 890 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
500 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—
890 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies	—

In a food matrix

500 ppb – 590 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
500 ppb	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	—
590 ppb	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	—

Retronasal / in-mouth

500 ppb – 200000 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
500 ppb SIDA	water_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
200000 ppb SIDA	beer_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

In air

0.668 ppb – 7.9 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.668 ppb	air (food: reference standard (air))	Literature corpus	—
7.9 ppb	air (C2_cometto_muniz_abraham)	Cometto-Muñiz (PMC)	—

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 (545.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 8 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
barley	101700.0	187 ⚡	PMID 23818966

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 butan-1-ol. 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 butan-1-ol in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

226 cmpds

421 cmpds

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