dimethyl sulfide

sulfurous sulfide Key food odorant

Found in 179 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C2H6S
Molecular weight: 62.14 g/mol
PubChem CID: 1068 — full record on PubChem

Key food odorant (intermediary)

Dunkel et al. 2014

Identified in the meta-analysis of 227 food samples as one of 57 intermediary odorants — appears in 5–25% of foods. Characteristic odor: cabbage, sulfurous.

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

Properties

Odor description: cabbage, sulfurous, cooked corn, vegetable
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 0.650 ppb 1 published value · see all 14 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 75-18-3
Retention index: 761

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.

Also filed as

dimethylsulfide

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.

cabbage, sulfur, gasoline Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

—

cabbage, gasoline, green, onion, radish, sulfur, sulfurous, sulfury, sweet corn, tomato, vegetable, wild FlavorDB 2.0

106

Sulfurous, vegetative tomato, corn and asparagus with a dairy creaminess and a slight minty afternote FlavorDB 2.0

chemical, coffee, cooked FlavorDB 2.0

sweet aroma FlavorDB 2.0

corn-like 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

14 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

0.650 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.650 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

0.072 ppb – 62.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.072 ppb	water (food: wine)	Literature corpus	22789457, 23870484, 28958525 +7
0.120 ppb	water (food: orange juice (reconstituted from concentrate))	Literature corpus	22789457, 23870484, 28958525 +7
0.300 ppb	water (food: green tea infusion (jingshan cha))	Literature corpus	22789457, 23870484, 28958525 +7
0.300 ppb	water (food: longjing green tea infusion)	Literature corpus	22789457, 23870484, 28958525 +7
0.600 ppb	water (food: bread)	Literature corpus	28958525
0.840 ppb	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	22789457, 23870484, 28958525 +7
0.900 ppb	water (food: pepper)	Literature corpus	34716586, 40060959
6.3 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	23870484, 30056667, 30166567 +1
31.2 ppb	water (food: honey)	Literature corpus	39437307
62.0 ppb	water (food: lamb)	Literature corpus	22789457

Retronasal / in-mouth

6.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
6.0 ppb	water_flavor	Leffingwell	—

In air

0.003 ppb – 3.0 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.003 ppb	air (food: reference standard (air))	Literature corpus	22789457, 23870484, 28958525 +7
3.0 ppb	air	Nagata 2003	—

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 (0.65 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 14 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
lamb	15000.0	23077 ⚡	Corpus paper
honey	31.6	48.6 ⚡	Corpus paper
pepper	3.5	5.38	Corpus paper
bread	2.0	3.08	Corpus paper
wine	0.1	0.18	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 dimethyl sulfide. 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 dimethyl sulfide in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

lamb

measured · OAV 23076.92

265 cmpds

364 cmpds

565 cmpds

14 cmpds