hexanol
floral alcohol Key food odorantFound in 29 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.
Look up another compound — search by name, CAS number, PubChem CID, or FEMA #.
Key food odorant (individualist)
Dunkel et al. 2014Identified in the meta-analysis of 227 food samples as one of 151 individualist odorants — appears in <5% of foods, carries the diagnostic signature of specific ingredients. Characteristic odor: green, grassy.
Properties
- Odor description
- green, fruity, grassy, fatty
- Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water
- 830 ppb – 5600 ppb median 2500 ppb · 3 published values · see all 20 with sources
- CAS number
- 111-27-3
- Retention index
- 878
FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use
- FEMA number
- 2665
- GRAS publication
- GRAS 3
- FEMA primary name
- MENTHOL-5-Methyl-2-iso-propylcyclohexanol
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
20 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
830 ppb – 5600 ppbThe reference measurement — smelled in water. OAV is computed against this.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 830 ppb SIDA | water | Rychlik 1998 · 4 studies | — |
| 2500 ppb | water_odor | Leffingwell | — |
| 5600 ppb SIDA | water | Dunkel 2014 | — |
In a food matrix
3.1 ppb – 4664 ppbMeasured in a real food, where the matrix shifts detection — not a clean-water value.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.230 ppb | water (food: rice) | Literature corpus | 41675126 |
| Flagged: 870× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden. | |||
| 1.0 ppb | water (food: apple) | Literature corpus | 17898464, 24441709, 24594176 +8 |
| Flagged: 200× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden. | |||
| 1.1 ppb | water (food: unknown) | Literature corpus | 24441709, 30687239, 40366211 |
| Flagged: 182× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden. | |||
| 3.1 ppb | water (food: chocolate) | Literature corpus | 17898464 |
| 13.0 ppb | water (food: fish) | Literature corpus | 24594176, 36144849, 37003052 |
| 18.1 ppb | water (food: grape) | Literature corpus | 17898464, 24441709, 24594176 +8 |
| 200 ppb | water (food: goat milk) | Literature corpus | 17898464, 24441709, 24594176 +8 |
| 336 ppb | water (food: peanut) | Literature corpus | 17898464, 24441709, 24594176 +8 |
| 373 ppb | water (food: wine) | Literature corpus | 17898464, 24441709, 24594176 +8 |
| 872 ppb | water (food: bread) | Literature corpus | 17898464, 24441709, 24594176 +8 |
| 1357 ppb | water (food: olive oil) | Literature corpus | 28671107 |
| 2500 ppb | water (food: reference standard (water)) | Literature corpus | 17898464, 24441709, 24594176 +8 |
| 4664 ppb | water (food: lime) | Literature corpus | 41048468 |
Retronasal / in-mouth
200 ppb – 200000 ppbTasted rather than smelled — a different sense, not comparable.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 200 ppb SIDA | water_retronasal | Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies | — |
| 200000 ppb SIDA | beer_retronasal | Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies | — |
In air
6.0 ppb – 8.1 ppbAirborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.0 ppb | air | Nagata 2003 | — |
| 8.1 ppb | air (C2_cometto_muniz_abraham) | Cometto-Muñiz (PMC) | — |
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 (354.5885 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 20 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.
| Food | Concentration (ppb) | OAV | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| honey | 372000.0 | 1049 ⚡ | PMID 29619623 |
| red wine | 300000.0 | 846 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| almond | 250000.0 | 705 ⚡ | DOI |
| brie | 100000.0 | 282 ⚡ | PMID 31554071 |
| cream | 71000.0 | 200 ⚡ | PMID 39045299 |
| olive | 40000.0 | 113 ⚡ | DOI |
| lamb | 20430.0 | 57.6 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| olive oil | 20200.0 | 57.0 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| spirit | 20000.0 | 56.4 ⚡ | DOI |
| grape | 11815.0 | 33.3 ⚡ | PMID 31866754 |
| turkey | 9984.7 | 28.2 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| pear | 8800.0 | 24.8 ⚡ | PMID 40276714 |
| rice wine | 4910.0 | 13.8 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| wine | 2500.0 | 7.05 | — |
| cucumber | 1400.0 | 3.95 | Corpus paper |
| peanut | 893.0 | 2.52 | Corpus paper |
| sage | 50.0 | 0.14 | PMID 36820911 |
| bread | 26.0 | 0.07 | PMID 38840722 |
| apple | 10.0 | 0.03 | PMID 30263331 |
| fish | 6.0 | 0.02 | 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 shareEvery ingredient known to contain hexanol. 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 hexanol in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.
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