estragole

green phenylpropanoid Key food odorant

Found in 41 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C10H12O
Molecular weight: 148.20 g/mol
PubChem CID: 8815 — 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: anise, licorice, sweet
Odor threshold — in a food matrix: 0.572 ppb – 1195 ppb median 13.0 ppb · 8 published values · see all 9 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 140-67-0
Retention index: 1198

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 2411
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: ESTRAGOLE

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.

anise, licorice, sweet shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

—

alcohol, anise, fennel, green, herbal, licorice, minty, sassafrass, spice, sweet, vanilla FlavorDB 2.0

Sweet, licorice, phenolic, weedy, spice, celery-like FlavorDB 2.0

anise-like FlavorDB 2.0

anise, green FlavorDB 2.0

anise, sweet 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

9 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

0.572 ppb – 1195 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.572 ppb	water (food: rum)	Literature corpus	37284321
3.3 ppb	water (food: lamb)	Literature corpus	28344493
6.0 ppb	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	12467918, 20858266, 23682630 +18
11.2 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	12467918, 20858266, 23682630 +13
14.7 ppb	water (food: beer)	Literature corpus	35292687
35.0 ppb	water (food: litsea pungens fruit)	Literature corpus	12467918, 20858266, 23682630 +18
39.1 ppb	water (food: apple)	Literature corpus	37021304
1195 ppb	water (food: tea)	Literature corpus	41549111

Retronasal / in-mouth

7.5 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
7.5 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 (12.969750000000001 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 9 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
tea	1195.0	92.1 ⚡	Corpus paper
jonagold apple	530.2	40.9 ⚡	Corpus paper
beer	11.0	0.85	Corpus paper
lamb	2.2	0.17	Corpus paper
rum	0.6	0.05	—

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 estragole. 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 estragole in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

✓1 14 cmpds

21 cmpds

30 cmpds

38 cmpds