hexenal

green aldehyde

Found in 3 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

Properties

Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 0.250 ppb 1 published value · see all 4 with sources
CAS number: 1335-39-3
Retention index: 846

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

? Partial match

FEMA number: 4194
GRAS publication: GRAS 22
FEMA primary name: (+/-)-2-Phenyl-4-methyl-2-hexenal

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	2	15
breakfast cereal	1	7
confectionery frostings	2	12
frozen dairy	1	8
gelatins/ puddings	0.5	5
imitation dairy	0.5	7.5
instant coffee/tea	2	12
milk products	0.5	5
soft candy	1	15

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. 12 related FEMA records for this name — verify the exact substance for regulatory use.

Published thresholds

4 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

0.250 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.250 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

0.840 ppb – 427 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.840 ppb	water (food: orange)	Literature corpus	37515910
76.0 ppb	water (food: chocolate)	Literature corpus	17898464
427 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	26299134, 29748791, 35626956 +1

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 (38.42 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 4 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
strawberry	44000.0	1145 ⚡	—
orange	768.0	20.0 ⚡	—
chocolate	0.1	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 hexenal. 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 hexenal in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

346 cmpds

372 cmpds

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