buten-1-ol

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: malty.

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

Properties

Odor description: fruity, fusel, solvent
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 1000 ppb – 19000 ppb median 7000 ppb · 3 published values · see all 14 with sources
CAS number: 78-83-1

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.

nutty FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

honey FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

chemical, coffee, eucalyptus FlavorDB 2.0

fruity, fusel, solvent shown above Llm Adjudicated

—

chemical Flavordb Odor Column

—

coffee Flavordb Odor Column

—

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

14 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

1000 ppb – 19000 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1000 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
7000 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—
19000 ppb SIDA	water	Dunkel 2014	—

In a food matrix

7.8 ppb – 654 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
3.5 ppb	water (food: wine)	Literature corpus	38846797, 40467248
Flagged: 156× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden.
7.8 ppb	water (food: rice)	Literature corpus	38846797, 40467248
550 ppb	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	38846797, 40467248
621 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	38846797, 40467248
654 ppb	water (food: bread)	Literature corpus	38846797, 40467248

In air

11.0 ppb – 676 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
11.0 ppb	air	Nagata 2003	—
676 ppb	air (HS_hellman_small)	Cometto-Muñiz (PMC)	—

Other matrix

180 ppb – 10069 ppb

Measured in a non-aqueous medium (oil, starch, cellulose).

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
180 ppb	wine matrix (12% ethanol) (food: rum / red wine)	Literature corpus	38846797, 40467248
500 ppb	wine (food: red wine (cabernet sauvignon))	Literature corpus	38846797, 40467248
10000 ppb	ethanol/water (food: rum / red wine)	Literature corpus	38846797, 40467248
10069 ppb	ethanol/water 40/60 (food: rum (aged))	Literature corpus	38846797, 40467248

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 (637.5 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 14 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
honey	53.9	0.08	DOI
coffee	6.0	0.01	PMID 34421873

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

201 cmpds

407 cmpds

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