limonene
herbal terpeneFound in 130 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.
Look up another compound — search by name, CAS number, PubChem CID, or FEMA #.
- Formula
- C10H16
- Molecular weight
- 136.23 g/mol
- PubChem CID
- 440917 — full record on PubChem
Properties
- Odor description
- citrus
- Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water
- 10.0 ppb 1 published value · see all 33 with sources
- Volatility
- high
FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use
- FEMA number
- 2633
- GRAS publication
- GRAS 3
- FEMA primary name
- d-LIMONENE
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.
Same molecule, unified here — previously counted and displayed as separate compounds.
Published thresholds
33 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
10.0 ppbThe reference measurement — smelled in water. OAV is computed against this.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10.0 ppb | water_odor | Leffingwell | — |
In a food matrix
0.300 ppb – 1770 ppbMeasured in a real food, where the matrix shifts detection — not a clean-water value.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.175 ppb | water (food: peach) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| Flagged: 159× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden. | |||
| 0.300 ppb | water (food: chocolate) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 0.300 ppb | water (food: honey) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 0.400 ppb | water (food: milk) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 1.0 ppb | water (food: apple) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 1.5 ppb | water (food: mango) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 1.7 ppb | water (food: lamb) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 3.0 ppb | water (food: ginger) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 4.0 ppb | water (food: tomato) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 4.5 ppb | water (food: tea) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 6.0 ppb | water (food: fish) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 12.5 ppb | water (food: beer) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 14.7 ppb | water (food: mushroom) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 27.8 ppb | water (food: rice) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 28.0 ppb | water (food: unknown) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 34.0 ppb | water (food: orange juice (reconstituted from concentrate)) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 38.2 ppb | water (food: grape) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 56.8 ppb | water (food: lemon) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 66.0 ppb | water (food: lime) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 86.3 ppb | water (food: orange) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 200 ppb | water (food: hand-squeezed grapefruit juice) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 224 ppb | water (food: wine) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 594 ppb | water (food: peanut) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 1024 ppb | water (food: rum) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 1029 ppb | water (food: bread) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 1204 ppb | water (food: beef) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 1770 ppb | water (food: blueberry) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 656492 ppb | water (food: pepper) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| Flagged: 23530× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden. | |||
In air
0.700 ppb – 38.0 ppbAirborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.700 ppb | air (food: dill seed) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 0.700 ppb | air (food: dill herb) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 10.0 ppb | air (food: reference standard (air)) | Literature corpus | 35496034 |
| 38.0 ppb | air | Nagata 2003 | — |
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 (12.88 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 33 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.
| Food | Concentration (ppb) | OAV | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| beef | 1200.0 | 93.2 ⚡ | — |
| lime | 1190.0 | 92.4 ⚡ | — |
| grape | 1131.7 | 87.9 ⚡ | — |
| peanut | 1042.0 | 80.9 ⚡ | — |
| mushroom | 1038.0 | 80.6 ⚡ | — |
| bread | 1023.0 | 79.4 ⚡ | — |
| blueberry | 786.0 | 61.0 ⚡ | — |
| rum | 546.0 | 42.4 ⚡ | — |
| peach | 332.9 | 25.9 ⚡ | — |
| orange | 98.1 | 7.61 | — |
| chocolate | 35.5 | 2.76 | — |
| mango | 19.3 | 1.50 | DOI |
| tomato | 8.1 | 0.63 | — |
| beer | 7.0 | 0.54 | — |
| pepper | 6.8 | 0.53 | — |
| fish | 6.0 | 0.47 | — |
| tea | 5.3 | 0.41 | — |
| ginger | 5.3 | 0.41 | — |
| lamb | 2.3 | 0.18 | — |
| milk | 1.8 | 0.14 | — |
Concentrations from PubMed Central Open Access papers (free literature corpus, MIT-style licensed). Copper = OAV ≥ 10 (strongly perceptible). Green = OAV ≥ 1 (perceptible).
These OAVs depend on which threshold you divide by. Published values for this molecule span 12.88–1250 ppb and the column above uses the lowest, which makes every OAV as large as it can be. At the high end each figure would be 97× smaller, and rows near the line would cross it. Read the colours as “worth a look”, not as a measurement.
Found in
Measured impact first, then profile shareEvery ingredient known to contain limonene. 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 limonene in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.
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