ethyl propionate

fruity ester

Found in 89 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C5H10O2
Molecular weight: 102.13 g/mol
PubChem CID: 7749 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: fruit
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 10.0 ppb – 15.0 ppb median 15.0 ppb · 3 published values · see all 12 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 105-37-3
Retention index: 936

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 2456
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: ETHYL PROPIONATE

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 propanoate

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

—

fruit, fruity, grape, juicy, pineapple, rum, sweet FlavorDB 2.0

chemical, fatty, fermented FlavorDB 2.0

fruity FlavorDB 2.0

fermented, fatty Flavordb Odor Column

—

chemical Flavordb Odor Column

—

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

12 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

10.0 ppb – 15.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
10.0 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—
15.0 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies	—
3452 ppb	water/ethanol 6:4 (food: american bourbon whisky)	Literature corpus	28671107
Flagged: 230× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden.

In a food matrix

2.0 ppb – 950 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1.0 ppb	water (food: apple)	Literature corpus	28671107
Flagged: 144× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden.
2.0 ppb	water (food: rice)	Literature corpus	28671107
3.5 ppb	water (food: garlic)	Literature corpus	28671107
144 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	28671107
166 ppb	water (food: peanut)	Literature corpus	28671107
737 ppb	water (food: tea)	Literature corpus	28671107
950 ppb	water (food: olive oil)	Literature corpus	28671107

In air

7.0 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
7.0 ppb	air	Nagata 2003	—

Other matrix

4.9 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
4.9 ppb	wine matrix (12% ethanol) (food: red wine)	Literature corpus	28671107

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 (15.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 12 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
olive	10000.0	667 ⚡	DOI
extra virgin olive oil	6000.0	400 ⚡	Corpus paper
olive oil	5000.2	333 ⚡	Corpus paper
grape	1000.0	66.7 ⚡	PMID 11308345
tea	735.0	49.0 ⚡	Corpus paper
peanut	667.7	44.5 ⚡	Corpus paper
fish oil	50.0	3.33	DOI
apple	15.0	1.00	Corpus paper
garlic	4.5	0.30	Corpus paper
rice	1.0	0.07	Corpus paper

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

olive

measured · OAV 666.67

370 cmpds

527 cmpds

13 cmpds

29 cmpds