hexanal
green aldehyde Key food odorantFound in 538 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.
Look up another compound — search by name, CAS number, PubChem CID, or FEMA #.
- Formula
- C6H12O
- Molecular weight
- 100.16 g/mol
- PubChem CID
- 6184 — full record on PubChem
Key food odorant (generalist)
Dunkel et al. 2014Identified in the meta-analysis of 227 food samples as one of 16 generalist odorants — appears in >25% of foods, typically from generic Maillard, lipid-oxidation, or fermentation pathways. Characteristic odor: green, grassy.
Properties
- Odor description
- grass, green, tallow, fatty
- Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water
- 4.8 ppb – 10.5 ppb median 7.6 ppb · 2 published values · see all 48 with sources
- Volatility
- high
- CAS number
- 66-25-1
- Retention index
- 802
FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use
- FEMA number
- 2557
- GRAS publication
- GRAS 3
- FEMA primary name
- HEXANAL
Use-level matrix not extracted for this substance — check the source publication for current ppm guidance.
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.
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.
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
48 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
4.8 ppb – 10.5 ppbThe reference measurement — smelled in water. OAV is computed against this.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4.8 ppb | water_odor | Leffingwell | — |
| 10.5 ppb SIDA | water | Rychlik 1998 · 5 studies | — |
In a food matrix
0.500 ppb – 940 ppbMeasured in a real food, where the matrix shifts detection — not a clean-water value.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.007 ppb | water (food: beer) | Literature corpus | — |
| Flagged: 1515× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden. | |||
| 0.030 ppb | water (food: melon) | Literature corpus | — |
| Flagged: 333× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden. | |||
| 0.500 ppb | water (food: lime) | Literature corpus | — |
| 0.730 ppb | water (food: longjing green tea infusion) | Literature corpus | — |
| 2.0 ppb | water (food: pork) | Literature corpus | — |
| 2.4 ppb | water (food: green tea infusion (jingshan cha)) | Literature corpus | — |
| 2.4 ppb | water (food: pink guava) | Literature corpus | — |
| 2.4 ppb | water (food: reference standard (water)) | Literature corpus | — |
| 2.4 ppb | water (food: goat milk) | Literature corpus | — |
| 2.8 ppb | water (food: pepper) | Literature corpus | — |
| 2.9 ppb | water (food: chocolate) | Literature corpus | — |
| 3.5 ppb | water (food: onion) | Literature corpus | — |
| 4.5 ppb | water (food: reference standard (water)) | Literature corpus | — |
| 4.5 ppb | water (food: wheat porridge / bread crumb) | Literature corpus | — |
| 4.5 ppb | water (food: extruded wheat flour) | Literature corpus | — |
| 6.7 ppb | water (food: strawberry) | Literature corpus | — |
| 9.7 ppb | water (food: truffle) | Literature corpus | — |
| 10.0 ppb | water (food: beef vegetable gravy) | Literature corpus | — |
| 10.0 ppb | water (food: pork vegetable gravy) | Literature corpus | — |
| 10.5 ppb | water (food: orange juice (reconstituted from concentrate)) | Literature corpus | — |
| 10.5 ppb | water (food: hand-squeezed grapefruit juice) | Literature corpus | — |
| 13.5 ppb | water (food: fish) | Literature corpus | — |
| 24.3 ppb | water (food: apple) | Literature corpus | — |
| 30.0 ppb | water (food: milk) | Literature corpus | — |
| 32.0 ppb | water (food: tea) | Literature corpus | — |
| 38.2 ppb | water (food: unknown) | Literature corpus | — |
| 52.0 ppb | water (food: soy sauce) | Literature corpus | — |
| 56.0 ppb | water (food: lamb) | Literature corpus | — |
| 73.0 ppb | water (food: smoked cooked loin (pork)) | Literature corpus | — |
| 101 ppb | water (food: wine) | Literature corpus | — |
| 278 ppb | water (food: peanut) | Literature corpus | — |
| 307 ppb | water (food: rum) | Literature corpus | — |
| 549 ppb | water (food: rice) | Literature corpus | — |
| 554 ppb | water (food: beef) | Literature corpus | — |
| 940 ppb | water (food: bread) | Literature corpus | — |
| 1074 ppb | water (food: olive oil) | Literature corpus | — |
| Flagged: 107× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden. | |||
Retronasal / in-mouth
16.0 ppb – 132 ppbTasted rather than smelled — a different sense, not comparable.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16.0 ppb SIDA | water_retronasal | Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies | — |
| 46.0 ppb | water_flavor | Leffingwell | — |
| 132 ppb SIDA | oil_retronasal | Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies | — |
In air
0.280 ppb – 0.331 ppbAirborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.280 ppb | air | Nagata 2003 | — |
| 0.331 ppb | air (C2_cometto_muniz_abraham) | Cometto-Muñiz (PMC) | — |
Other matrix
30.0 ppb – 5870 ppbMeasured in a non-aqueous medium (oil, starch, cellulose).
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30.0 ppb SIDA | starch | Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies | — |
| 87.9 ppb | ethanol/water 40/60 (food: rum (aged)) | Literature corpus | — |
| 88.0 ppb | ethanol/water (food: rum) | Literature corpus | — |
| 210 ppb SIDA | oil_orthonasal | Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies | — |
| 5870 ppb SIDA | meat_water | 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 (10.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 48 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.
| Food | Concentration (ppb) | OAV | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| mango | 40.2 | 4.02 | DOI |
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 shareEvery ingredient known to contain hexanal. 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 hexanal in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.
The inverted compound index is a Pro feature — reverse-search any of 5,240 flavor molecules across the full graph.
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 hexanal, or compare two ingredients side-by-side.