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ethyl 3-hydroxyhexanoate

fruity ester Key food odorant

Found in 20 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis structure of ethyl 3-hydroxyhexanoate
2D Lewis Structure
Formula
C8H16O3
Molecular weight
160.21 g/mol
PubChem CID
61293 — 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
fresh
Odor threshold — in a food matrix
270 ppb 1 published value · see all 1 with sources
Volatility
medium
CAS number
2305-25-1
Retention index
1677
Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

~ Likely match
FEMA number
3545
GRAS publication
GRAS 11
FEMA primary name
ETHYL 3-HYDROXYHEXANOATE 5.0 1.0

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.

fresh shown above Flavornet Cas
—
fruity grape burnt wood hay spicy pineapple cranberry dusty woody FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
1
citrus, fresh, fruity, grape, pineapple, smoky FlavorDB 2.0
19

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

1 measured value 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

270 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
270 ppb water (food: hand-squeezed grapefruit juice) Literature corpus —

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 ethyl 3-hydroxyhexanoate. 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 ethyl 3-hydroxyhexanoate in it.

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