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citronellol

floral terpenoid_alcohol

Found in 58 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis structure of citronellol
2D Lewis Structure
Formula
C10H20O
Molecular weight
156.26 g/mol
PubChem CID
8842 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description
rose, green, citronella
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water
40.0 ppb 2 published values · see all 3 with sources
Volatility
medium
CAS number
106-22-9
Retention index
1230
Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

? Partial match
FEMA number
2309
GRAS publication
GRAS 3
FEMA primary name
di-CITRONELLOL

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.

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, green, citronella shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree
—
bitter, citrus, floral, geranium, leather, rose, rose bud, waxy FlavorDB 2.0
30
floral FlavorDB 2.0
18
floral leather waxy rose bud citrus FlavorDB 2.0
7
rose and green notes FlavorDB 2.0
1
fruity FlavorDB 2.0
1

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

3 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

40.0 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
40.0 ppb water_odor Leffingwell —
40.0 ppb SIDA water Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies —

Retronasal / in-mouth

10.0 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
10.0 ppb SIDA water_retronasal Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies —

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 (40.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 3 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food Concentration (ppb) OAV Source
beef 1728.0 43.2 ⚡ Corpus paper
rum 41.0 1.03 Corpus paper
rice 9.8 0.25 Corpus paper
lemon 2.0 0.05 Corpus paper
wine 1.7 0.04 Corpus paper
tea 1.1 0.03 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 citronellol. 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 citronellol in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

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