Skip to main content

eucalyptol

herbal terpenoid Key food odorant

Found in 123 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis structure of eucalyptol
2D Lewis Structure
Formula
C10H18O
Molecular weight
154.25 g/mol
PubChem CID
2758 — 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
eucalyptus, herbal, camphor
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water
12.0 ppb 1 published value · see all 13 with sources
Volatility
medium
CAS number
470-82-6
Retention index
1032
Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

~ Likely match
FEMA number
2465
GRAS publication
GRAS 3
FEMA primary name
EUCALYPTOL-1,8-Epoxy-p-menthane; Cineole

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
1,8-cineole

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.

eucalyptus, herbal, camphor shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 4 sources agree
13
pine FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
5
soy, pine, clove FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
1
camphor FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
1
camphor, eucalyptus, herbal, mint, pepper, sweet FlavorDB 2.0
64
fresh, citric FlavorDB 2.0
1

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

13 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

12.0 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
12.0 ppb water_odor Leffingwell —

In a food matrix

10.7 ppb – 2646 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
0.050 ppb water (food: fish) Literature corpus —
Flagged: 3110× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden.
1.1 ppb water (food: reference standard (water)) Literature corpus —
Flagged: 141× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden.
10.7 ppb water (food: rum) Literature corpus —
23.6 ppb water (food: unknown) Literature corpus —
81.0 ppb water (food: milk) Literature corpus —
230 ppb water (food: litsea pungens fruit) Literature corpus —
517 ppb water (food: peach) Literature corpus —
519 ppb water (food: ginger) Literature corpus —
520 ppb water (food: tea) Literature corpus —
2646 ppb water (food: blueberry) Literature corpus —

Retronasal / in-mouth

0.260 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
0.260 ppb SIDA water_retronasal Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies —

Other matrix

84.0 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
84.0 ppb SIDA starch 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 (81.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 13 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food Concentration (ppb) OAV Source
date 912000.0 11259 ⚡ PMID 33195174
tobacco 218000.0 2691 ⚡ PMID 26388954
basil 100000.0 1235 ⚡ PMID 40444174
cinnamon 10000.0 123 ⚡ DOI
blueberry 2219.0 27.4 ⚡ Corpus paper
tea 520.1 6.42 Corpus paper
peach 170.2 2.10 Corpus paper
rum 43.0 0.53 Corpus paper
milk 12.5 0.15 Corpus paper
ginger 11.0 0.14 Corpus paper
beetroot 5.0 0.06 —
bread 5.0 0.06 PMID 38840722
fish 0.3 0.00 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 eucalyptol. 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 eucalyptol in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

See all 123 ingredients with Pro

The inverted compound index is a Pro feature — reverse-search any of 5,240 flavor molecules across the full graph.

Into the chemistry?

Get a molecule-level pairing breakdown each week — which ingredients share a compound, and why it matters at the table. Free, no spam.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Try the pairing tools to see which ingredient combinations rely on eucalyptol, or compare two ingredients side-by-side.