ethyl lactate

fruity ester

Found in 63 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C5H10O3
Molecular weight: 118.13 g/mol
PubChem CID: 7344 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: fruit
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 14000 ppb 1 published value · see all 8 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 97-64-3
Retention index: 1353

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

~ Likely match

FEMA number: 2440
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: ETHYL LACTATE-Ethyl a-hydroxypropionate

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

ethyl 2-hydroxypropanoate

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.

fruit shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

—

fruity, sweet, honey, apple, pear FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

butter, butterscotch, buttery, fruit, fruity, sharp, tart FlavorDB 2.0

MILD, FRUITY-ETHEREAL, BUTTERY FlavorDB 2.0

apple, pear, pine, banana, butter FlavorDB 2.0

fruity 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

14000 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
14000 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

16.3 ppb – 862 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
16.3 ppb	water (food: bread)	Literature corpus	28274420
16.5 ppb	water (food: rice)	Literature corpus	38846797, 40467248
17.8 ppb SIDA	water (food: grape)	Literature corpus	18570373, 19753606, 24789719 +10
69.5 ppb SIDA	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	18570373, 19753606, 25857434 +2
412 ppb	water (food: lime)	Literature corpus	24789719, 32608514, 41048468
862 ppb	water (food: tea)	Literature corpus	31861730

Other matrix

15000 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
15000 ppb SIDA	wine (food: red wine (cabernet sauvignon))	Literature corpus	18570373, 19753606, 24789719 +10

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

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
baijiu	930120.0	13383 ⚡	PMID 41190275
lard	100000.0	1439 ⚡	PMID 25036492
grape	73135.0	1052 ⚡	PMID 31866754
rice	7001.5	101 ⚡	Corpus paper
wine	1000.0	14.4 ⚡	PMID 41367417
tea	861.0	12.4 ⚡	—
loquat	690.0	9.93	—
lime	300.0	4.32	—
red wine	100.0	1.44	—
white wine	20.0	0.29	—
bread	15.5	0.22	—

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

baijiu

measured · OAV 13383.02

201 cmpds

grape

measured · OAV 1052.3

578 cmpds

565 cmpds

617 cmpds