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diethyl malate

fruity ester

Found in 13 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis structure of diethyl malate
2D Lewis Structure
Formula
C8H14O5
Molecular weight
190.19 g/mol
PubChem CID
24197 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description
brown sugar, sweet
Odor threshold — in a food matrix
91.0 ppb 1 published value · see all 2 with sources
Volatility
medium
CAS number
7554-12-3
Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

~ Likely match
FEMA number
2374
GRAS publication
GRAS 3
FEMA primary name
DIETHYL MALATE-Ethyl malate

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

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33.

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.

brown sugar, sweet shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree
—
brown sugar sweet wine fruity herbal FlavorDB 2.0
12
candied fruits 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

2 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

91.0 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
91.0 ppb water (food: unknown) Literature corpus 38798837

Other matrix

760 ppb

Measured in a non-aqueous medium (oil, starch, cellulose).

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
760 ppb wine (food: red wine (cabernet sauvignon)) Literature corpus 38798837

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.

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain diethyl malate. 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 diethyl malate in it.

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