ethyl benzoate

fruity ester Key food odorant

Found in 67 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C9H10O2
Molecular weight: 150.17 g/mol
PubChem CID: 7165 — 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: fruity, sweet, wintergreen, musty
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 60.0 ppb 1 published value · see all 8 with sources
Volatility: medium
CAS number: 93-89-0
Retention index: 1595

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 2422
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: ETHYL BENZOATE

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.

Also filed as

ethylbenzoate

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.

camomile, flower, celery, fruit Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

—

solvent FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

menthol FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

anise, balsam, banana, berry, bitter, camomile, celery, cherry, cranberry, dry, flower, fruit, fruity, grape, minty, musty, plum, raspberry, strawberry, sweet, wintergreen FlavorDB 2.0

honey, mint, medicinal, fruity FlavorDB 2.0

fruity dry musty sweet wintergreen 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

8 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

60.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
60.0 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

0.700 ppb – 1174 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.700 ppb	water (food: grape)	Literature corpus	36890905
2.0 ppb	water (food: rice)	Literature corpus	38846797, 40467248
51.0 ppb	water (food: garlic)	Literature corpus	24789719, 26299134, 35011467 +6
53.0 ppb	water (food: pink guava)	Literature corpus	24789719, 26299134, 35011467 +6
168 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	26299134, 35497223, 41019745 +1
841 ppb	water (food: wine)	Literature corpus	35011467
1174 ppb	water (food: lime)	Literature corpus	24789719

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 (56.5 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 8 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
garlic	105.0	1.86	Corpus paper
lager	100.0	1.77	Corpus paper
wine	66.0	1.17	PMID 26304447
lime	24.6	0.44	Corpus paper
rice	1.0	0.02	Corpus paper
grape	0.4	0.01	—

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 ethyl benzoate. 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 benzoate in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

565 cmpds

578 cmpds

12 cmpds

13 cmpds