cinnamaldehyde

spicy aldehyde

Found in 388 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C9H8O
Molecular weight: 132.16 g/mol
PubChem CID: 637511 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: cinnamon, spicy, sweet
Odor threshold — in a food matrix: 21.0 ppb – 620 ppb median 132 ppb · 5 published values · see all 5 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 104-55-2
Retention index: 1302

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

~ Likely match

FEMA number: 2286
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: CINNAMALDEHYDE-Cinnamic aldehyde; 3-Phenyl

Use-level matrix not extracted for this substance — check the source publication for current ppm guidance.

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. 2 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.

Also filed as

3-phenyl-2-propenal

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

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.

cinnamon, spicy, sweet shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

—

candy, cinnamon, clove, paint, red hots, spice, sweet, warm FlavorDB 2.0

378

SWEET, CINNAMON 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

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.

In a food matrix

21.0 ppb – 620 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
21.0 ppb	water (food: lemon)	Literature corpus	34853254
82.2 ppb	water (food: peach)	Literature corpus	28510850, 30005688, 34853254 +11
132 ppb	water (food: cinnamon)	Literature corpus	28510850, 30005688, 34853254 +11
132 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	28510850, 30005688, 36762076 +8
620 ppb	water (food: rice)	Literature corpus	40468875, 40617844

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

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
cinnamon	2061.0	15.6 ⚡	Corpus paper
peach	553.7	4.20	Corpus paper
rice	11.4	0.09	Corpus paper
lemon	2.5	0.02	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 cinnamaldehyde. 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 cinnamaldehyde in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

327 cmpds

375 cmpds

432 cmpds

365 cmpds