isoeugenol

spicy phenol Key food odorant

Found in 398 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C10H12O2
Molecular weight: 164.20 g/mol
PubChem CID: 853433 — full record on PubChem

Key food odorant (individualist)

Dunkel et al. 2014

Identified 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.

Source: Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 7124–7143

Properties

Odor description: clove, sweet, spicy
Odor threshold — in a food matrix: 3.6 ppb – 1177 ppb median 56.4 ppb · 4 published values · see all 4 with sources
Volatility: medium
CAS number: 97-54-1
Retention index: 1847

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.

clove, sweet, spicy shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

—

chemical FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

soy, pine, clove FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

spicy FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

carnation, clove, floral, flower, phenolic, spicy, sweet, woody FlavorDB 2.0

390

Sweet spice and clove with woody and phenolic nuances FlavorDB 2.0

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

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.

In a food matrix

3.6 ppb – 1177 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
3.6 ppb	water (food: tea)	Literature corpus	—
12.9 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	—
100 ppb	water (food: smoked cooked loin (pork))	Literature corpus	—
1177 ppb	water (food: wine)	Literature corpus	—

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 (56.4253 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 4 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
vanilla	120000.0	2127 ⚡	PMID 37543600
fennel	100000.0	1772 ⚡	PMID 39577927
red wine	40.9	0.73	Corpus paper
wine	27.5	0.49	Corpus paper
tea	4.0	0.07	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 share

Every ingredient known to contain isoeugenol. 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 isoeugenol in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

vanilla

measured · OAV 2126.71

308 cmpds

fennel

measured · OAV 1772.25

305 cmpds

565 cmpds

617 cmpds