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hexyl butyrate

fruity ester

Found in 34 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis structure of hexyl butyrate
2D Lewis Structure
Formula
C10H20O2
Molecular weight
172.26 g/mol
PubChem CID
17525 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description
fruity, green apple, waxy, sweet
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water
250 ppb 1 published value · see all 5 with sources
Volatility
medium
CAS number
2639-63-6
Retention index
1418
Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match
FEMA number
2568
GRAS publication
GRAS 3
FEMA primary name
HEXYL BUTYRATE

Use-level matrix not extracted for this substance — check the source publication for current ppm guidance.

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33.

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.

Also filed as
hexyl butanoate

Same molecule, unified here — previously counted and displayed as separate compounds.

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.

apple peel Flavornet Cas
—
apple, apple peel, fruity, green, soapy, sweet, waxy FlavorDB 2.0
26
apple, fruity, floral, sweet, honey, citrus, pine FlavorDB 2.0
1
fruity, green apple, waxy, sweet shown above Llm Adjudicated
—
fruity, floral, sweet, honey, citrus Flavordb Odor Column
—
pine Flavordb Odor Column
—

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

5 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

250 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
250 ppb water_odor Leffingwell —

In a food matrix

0.370 ppb – 13.5 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
0.370 ppb water (food: wine) Literature corpus 36496598
0.560 ppb water (food: tomato) Literature corpus 36496598
13.5 ppb water (food: apple) Literature corpus 36496598
803 ppb water (food: unknown) Literature corpus 36496598
Flagged: 114× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden.

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 (13.52 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 5 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food Concentration (ppb) OAV Source
apple 355.0 26.3 ⚡ Corpus paper
wine 1.0 0.07 —
tomato 0.8 0.06 —
strawberry 0.4 0.03 —

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 hexyl butyrate. 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 hexyl butyrate in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

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