gentisic acid

sour acid

Found in 375 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C7H6O4
Molecular weight: 154.12 g/mol
PubChem CID: 3469 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor threshold — in a food matrix: 9.1 ppb – 81.0 ppb median 45.1 ppb · 2 published values · see all 2 with sources
Volatility: medium
CAS number: 490-79-9

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.

Published thresholds

2 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

9.1 ppb – 81.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
9.1 ppb	water (food: tea)	Literature corpus	40226889
81.0 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	36037121, 41249942, 41272091

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 (45.084 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 2 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
tea	70.0	1.55	—

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

103 cmpds

103 cmpds

104 cmpds

104 cmpds