inositol

floral oxygenated compound

Found in 29 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C6H12O6
Molecular weight: 180.16 g/mol
PubChem CID: 892 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: odorless, faintly sweet
Odor threshold — in a food matrix: 2.0 ppb – 36.5 ppb median 19.3 ppb · 2 published values · see all 2 with sources
Volatility: low
CAS number: 87-89-8
Retention index: 2142

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.

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.

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.

violet FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

chemical FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

rose, pine, chemical, chocolate, soy FlavorDB 2.0

butter, pear, rose, chemical FlavorDB 2.0

odorless, faintly sweet shown above Llm Adjudicated

—

butter, pear, rose 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

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

2.0 ppb – 36.5 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
2.0 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	31146432, 41168382
36.5 ppb	water (food: garlic)	Literature corpus	31146432, 41168382

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

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
honey	100000.0	2739 ⚡	PMID 41191685
turkey	5500.0	151 ⚡	—
tomato	4000.0	110 ⚡	—
garlic	108.5	2.97	—

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 inositol. 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 inositol in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

201 cmpds

232 cmpds

233 cmpds

240 cmpds