butyl mercaptan

sulfurous sulfide

Found in 8 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C4H10S
Molecular weight: 90.19 g/mol
PubChem CID: 8012 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: sulfury, garlic, onion, egg, coffee
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 6.0 ppb 1 published value · see all 4 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 109-79-5

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.

Also filed as

1-butanethiol

Same molecule, unified here — previously counted and displayed as separate compounds.

Published thresholds

4 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

6.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
6.0 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

0.560 ppb

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

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

Retronasal / in-mouth

0.004 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.004 ppb	water_flavor	Leffingwell	—

In air

0.003 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.003 ppb	air	Nagata 2003	—

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 (3.2800000000000002 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 4 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
pear brandy	1.2	0.36	Corpus paper

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 butyl mercaptan. 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 butyl mercaptan in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

167 cmpds

186 cmpds

304 cmpds

320 cmpds