gallic acid

sour acid

Found in 360 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C7H6O5
Molecular weight: 170.12 g/mol
PubChem CID: 370 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor threshold — in a food matrix: 2.5 ppb – 1938 ppb median 35.3 ppb · 5 published values · see all 5 with sources
Volatility: medium
CAS number: 149-91-7
Retention index: 3

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 4994
GRAS publication: GRAS 31
CAS number: 149-91-7
FEMA primary name: Gallic acid

Reported use levels (ppm by food category)

Typical vs maximum reported addition levels in finished food. Use as a regulatory ceiling reference — verify against the current GRAS publication for your product category.

Food category	Typical (ppm)	Maximum (ppm)
baked goods	250	640
breakfast cereals	200	400
cheeses	200	400
condiments and relishes	80	280
confections and frostings	100	250
fats and oils	70	300
fish products	100	400
imitation dairy products	150	400
meat products	150	280
nut products	200	720
other grains	200	400
poultry products	200	280
snack foods	240	500
soft candy	70	200
sweet sauces	80	280

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33.

Published thresholds

5 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

2.5 ppb – 1938 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.020 ppb	water (food: wine)	Literature corpus	31882111
Flagged: 1764× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden.
2.5 ppb	water (food: tea)	Literature corpus	26978340, 27761066, 36570894 +5
35.3 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	23884120, 31227024, 32206225 +19
232 ppb	water (food: tomato)	Literature corpus	38253713
1938 ppb	water (food: beer)	Literature corpus	41730959

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 (35.278 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 5 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
black mulberry	66200.0	1877 ⚡	Corpus paper
jelly bush honey	2320.0	65.8 ⚡	Corpus paper
tomato	8.4	0.24	Corpus paper
beer	3.6	0.10	Corpus paper
tea	1.5	0.04	—
wine	0.0	0.00	—

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 gallic acid. 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 gallic acid in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

black mulberry

measured · OAV 1876.52

203 cmpds

519 cmpds

457 cmpds

617 cmpds