carboxylic acid

Found in 4 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

Properties

Odor description: fatty, waxy, sour
Odor threshold — in air: 24.0 ppb 1 published value · see all 1 with sources
CAS number: 591-78-6

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

? Partial match

FEMA number: 4130
GRAS publication: GRAS 22
FEMA primary name: cis- and trans-2-Heptylcyclopropanecarboxylic acid

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	0.01	0.03
beverages (alcoholic)	0.003	0.01
beverages (nonalcoholic)	0.003	0.01
breakfast cereal	0.003	0.02
cheese	0.01	0.03
chewing gum	0.005	0.02
confectionery frostings	0.005	0.015
fish products	0.005	0.02
frozen dairy	0.005	0.02
fruit ices	0.005	0.015
gelatins/ puddings	0.003	0.015
gravies	0.005	0.02
hard candy	0.1	0.03
imitation dairy	0.003	0.015
jams/jellies	0.003	0.015
meat products	0.01	0.03
milk products	0.003	0.015
nut products	0.005	0.02
poultry	0.01	0.03
seasonings/ flavors	0.01	0.03
snack foods	0.01	0.03
soft candy	0.005	0.02
soups	0.003	0.02
sweet sauces	0.003	0.015

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. 3 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.

chemical FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

fatty FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

acrid, anise, apple FlavorDB 2.0

fatty, waxy, sour shown above Llm Adjudicated

—

acrid Flavordb Odor Column

—

anise 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

1 measured value 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 air

24.0 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
24.0 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 (930.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 1 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
sourdough	100000.0	108 ⚡	DOI
saskatoon berry	76060.0	81.8 ⚡	PMID 41909868
cumin	10000.0	10.8 ⚡	PMID 36575850

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 carboxylic acid. 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 carboxylic acid in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

128 cmpds

268 cmpds

407 cmpds

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