coumarin

herbal lactone Key food odorant

Found in 392 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C9H6O2
Molecular weight: 146.14 g/mol
PubChem CID: 323 — full record on PubChem

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: sweet, hay, vanilla
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 25.0 ppb 1 published value · see all 7 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 91-64-5
Retention index: 1455

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

? Partial match

FEMA number: 5018
GRAS publication: GRAS 31
CAS number: 350982-20-6
FEMA primary name: 3,4-Dihydro-7-hydroxy-4-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl)-2H-1-benzopyran-2-one alpha-Ferulic coumarin

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	30	60
beverages type i, non-alcoholic	30	60
beverages type ii, alcoholic	30	60
breakfast cereals	30	60
chewing gum	30	60
condiments and relishes	30	60
confections and frostings	30	60
frozen dairy	30	60
fruit ices	30	60
gelatins and puddings	30	60
gravies	30	60
hard candy	30	60
imitation dairy products	30	60
instant coffee and tea	30	60
jams and jellies	30	60
milk products	30	60
nut products	30	60
other grains	30	60
processed fruits	30	60
seasonings and flavors	30	60
snack foods	30	60
soft candy	30	60
soups	30	60
sweet sauces	30	60

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. 4 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.

sweet, hay, vanilla shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

—

bitter, green, new mown hay, sweet, tonka FlavorDB 2.0

380

sweet FlavorDB 2.0

flowery 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

7 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

25.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
25.0 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

In a food matrix

4.8 ppb – 23.1 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
4.8 ppb	water (food: tea)	Literature corpus	40226889
5.2 ppb	water (food: longjing green tea infusion)	Literature corpus	28510850, 34401078, 36474235 +10
11.0 ppb	water (food: green tea infusion (jingshan cha))	Literature corpus	28510850, 34401078, 36474235 +10
23.1 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	28510850, 34401078, 36474235 +8
1386 ppb	water (food: rice)	Literature corpus	40468875
Flagged: 126× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden.

Retronasal / in-mouth

25.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
25.0 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 (23.05 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 7 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
tea	49.0	2.13	Corpus paper
rice	28.7	1.25	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 coumarin. 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 coumarin in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

617 cmpds

432 cmpds

10 cmpds

36 cmpds