enoic acid

Key food odorant

Found in 3 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

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.

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

Properties

Odor description: butter, cheesy, sweaty, rancid, fatty, sharp, chemical
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 1.0 ppb – 5.9 ppb median 1.2 ppb · 3 published values · see all 16 with sources
CAS number: 78-84-2

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

? Partial match

FEMA number: 4891
GRAS publication: GRAS 29
CAS number: 2088117-65-9
FEMA primary name: (E)-3-Methyl-4-dodecenoic acid

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	0.1	1
beverages, alcoholic	0.001	0.1
beverages, non-alcoholic	0.001	0.1
chewing gum	0.001	0.1
confections and frostings	0.001	0.3
egg products	0.001	0.3
fats and oils	0.01	1
fish products	0.001	0.3
frozen dairy	0.001	0.2
fruit ices	0.001	0.2
gelatins and puddings	0.01	0.1
gravies	0.001	0.05
hard candy	0.001	0.3
imitation dairy	0.0001	0.05
instant coffee and tea	0.0001	0.1
milk products	0.001	0.05
nut products	0.001	0.05
seasonings and flavors	0.01	2
snack foods	0.001	0.3
soft candy	0.001	0.3
soups	0.0001	0.3
sugar substitutes	0.001	0.05

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. 45 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.

butter, cheesy, sweaty, rancid, fatty, sharp, chemical shown above FlavorDB 2.0

chemical Flavordb Odor Column

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cheesy, sweaty, rancid, fatty, sharp Flavordb Odor Column

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butter Flavordb Odor Column

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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

16 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

1.0 ppb – 5.9 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1.0 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 5 studies	—
1.2 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—
5.9 ppb	water/ethanol 6:4 (food: american bourbon whisky)	Literature corpus	24594176, 33488534, 36144849 +1

In a food matrix

0.490 ppb – 72.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.490 ppb	water (food: green tea infusion (jingshan cha))	Literature corpus	24594176, 33488534, 36144849 +1
0.490 ppb	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	24594176, 33488534, 36144849 +1
0.490 ppb	water (food: longjing green tea infusion)	Literature corpus	24594176, 33488534, 36144849 +1
0.750 ppb	water (food: rice)	Literature corpus	24594176, 33488534, 36144849 +1
1.0 ppb	water (food: extruded wheat flour)	Literature corpus	24594176, 33488534, 36144849 +1
3.0 ppb	water (food: fish)	Literature corpus	24594176, 36144849, 37003052
72.0 ppb	water (food: lamb)	Literature corpus	24594176, 33488534, 36144849 +1
279 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	33488534
Flagged: 319× 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

0.700 ppb – 3.4 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.700 ppb SIDA	water_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
3.4 ppb SIDA	oil_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

Other matrix

18.0 ppb – 56.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
18.0 ppb SIDA	cellulose	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
23.2 ppb SIDA	oil_orthonasal	Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies	—
56.0 ppb SIDA	starch	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.

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain enoic acid. 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 enoic acid in it.

268 cmpds

407 cmpds

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