gamma-nonanolactone

dairy lactone Key food odorant

Found in 87 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

Key food odorant (intermediary)

Dunkel et al. 2014

Identified in the meta-analysis of 227 food samples as one of 57 intermediary odorants — appears in 5–25% of foods.

Source: Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 7124–7143

Properties

Odor description: coconut, creamy, sweet, waxy, peach
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 21.0 ppb – 47.5 ppb median 34.2 ppb · 2 published values · see all 11 with sources
CAS number: 104-61-0

Not in FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. Of 3,367 listed flavoring substances, none match this compound name. May still be food-safe under other regulatory routes (FDA 21 CFR 172, EFSA, JECFA) — check femaflavor.org for the authoritative current list.

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.

buttery, coconut, creamy, oily, peach, sweet, waxy FlavorDB 2.0

sweet FlavorDB 2.0

coconut milk FlavorDB 2.0

coconut, creamy, sweet, waxy, peach shown above Llm Adjudicated

—

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

11 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

21.0 ppb – 47.5 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
21.0 ppb	water/ethanol 6:4 (food: american bourbon whisky)	Literature corpus	—
47.5 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

In a food matrix

0.270 ppb – 102 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.270 ppb	water (food: longjing green tea infusion)	Literature corpus	—
9.7 ppb	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	—
24.0 ppb	water (food: chocolate)	Literature corpus	—
27.0 ppb	water (food: beef vegetable gravy)	Literature corpus	—
27.0 ppb	water (food: pork vegetable gravy)	Literature corpus	—
102 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	—

Retronasal / in-mouth

219 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
219 ppb SIDA	oil_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

Other matrix

42.0 ppb – 148 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
42.0 ppb	wine matrix (12% ethanol) (food: red wine)	Literature corpus	—
148 ppb SIDA	oil_orthonasal	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.

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain gamma-nonanolactone. 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 gamma-nonanolactone in it.

16 cmpds

22 cmpds

26 cmpds

35 cmpds