furfuryl alcohol

caramel alcohol

Found in 97 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C5H6O2
Molecular weight: 98.10 g/mol
PubChem CID: 7361 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: burnt, sweet, caramel
Odor threshold — in a food matrix: 31.8 ppb – 1678 ppb median 444 ppb · 3 published values · see all 4 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 98-00-0
Retention index: 865

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 2491
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: FURFURYL ALCOHOL

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.

burnt, sweet, caramel shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

—

alcoholic, bitter, bread, burnt, caramel, chemical, coffee, musty, sweet FlavorDB 2.0

Burnt, sweet, caramellic, brown FlavorDB 2.0

sweet, caramel FlavorDB 2.0

pleasant aroma 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

4 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.

In a food matrix

31.8 ppb – 1678 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
31.8 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	28864886, 40366211
444 ppb	water (food: bread)	Literature corpus	28274420, 38519512
1678 ppb	water (food: wine)	Literature corpus	28274420, 28864886, 38519512 +1

Retronasal / in-mouth

5000 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
5000 ppb	water_flavor	Leffingwell	—

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 (443.9045 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 4 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
bread	440.4	0.99	Corpus paper
wine	55.7	0.13	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 furfuryl alcohol. 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 furfuryl alcohol in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

210 cmpds

565 cmpds

33 cmpds

48 cmpds