catechol

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.

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

Properties

Odor description: phenolic, smoky, medicinal
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 1850 ppb 1 published value · see all 5 with sources
CAS number: 91-10-1

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.

rose FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

orange, chemical FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

butter, chemical, coffee FlavorDB 2.0

phenolic, smoky, medicinal shown above Llm Adjudicated

—

chemical Flavordb Odor Column

—

chemical, 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

5 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

1850 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1850 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

3.0 ppb – 164 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
3.0 ppb	water (food: tea)	Literature corpus	—
12.5 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	—
164 ppb	water (food: wine)	Literature corpus	—

Retronasal / in-mouth

1650 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1650 ppb	water_flavor	Leffingwell	—

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 (88.505 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 5 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
rice	881070.0	9955 ⚡	PMID 36766166
whisky	26400.0	298 ⚡	PMID 39796387
veal	14220.0	161 ⚡	PMID 39696148

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 catechol. 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 catechol in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

veal

measured · OAV 160.67

407 cmpds

268 cmpds

Into the chemistry?

Get a molecule-level pairing breakdown each week — which ingredients share a compound, and why it matters at the table. Free, no spam.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Try the pairing tools to see which ingredient combinations rely on catechol, or compare two ingredients side-by-side.