butanol

floral alcohol Key food odorant

Found in 8 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

Ambiguous name

“butanol” does not identify one molecule. May be 1-butanol or 2-butanol, which are different molecules with different odours. Until 2026-08-09 our alias map folded this name onto 2-butanol; it should never have claimed either.

We assign no CAS number, structure or odour threshold to this entry. Guessing one would make the record look more certain than the evidence is.

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: wine
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: 1147

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

? Partial match

FEMA number: 4894
GRAS publication: GRAS 29
CAS number: 116229-37-9
FEMA primary name: 2-Mercapto-3-methyl-1-butanol

Reported use levels (ppm by food category)

Typical vs maximum reported addition levels in finished food. Use as a regulatory ceiling reference — verify against the current GRAS publication for your product category.

Food category	Typical (ppm)	Maximum (ppm)
baked goods	0.001	1
beverages, alcoholic	0.0001	0.1
beverages, non-alcoholic	0.0001	0.1
frozen dairy	0.0001	0.1
gelatins and puddings	0.0001	0.1
instant coffee and tea	0.0001	0.1
milk products	0.0001	0.01

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. 16 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.

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.

wine shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 4 sources agree

floral and fruity FlavorDB 2.0

ripe pear aroma FlavorDB 2.0

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.

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain butanol. 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 butanol in it.

153 cmpds

227 cmpds

288 cmpds

364 cmpds