maltol

caramel pyrrole Key food odorant

Found in 61 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C6H6O3
Molecular weight: 126.11 g/mol
PubChem CID: 8369 — 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: caramel, sweet, cotton candy
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 0.150 ppb – 35000 ppb median 17500 ppb · 2 published values · see all 9 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 118-71-8
Retention index: 1106

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 2656
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: MALTOL

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.

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.

caramel, sweet, cotton candy shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

—

peach FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

pine FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

chemical FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

baked, bread, candy, caramel, cotton, fruity, jam, sweet FlavorDB 2.0

Sweet, cotton candy, caramellic, with jammy fruity and berry notes 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

9 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

0.150 ppb – 35000 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.150 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
35000 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

0.720 ppb – 1108 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.720 ppb	water (food: honey)	Literature corpus	41306594
17.6 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	35396186, 36781893, 40538424 +2
33.5 ppb	water (food: milk)	Literature corpus	10552650, 39479676
988 ppb	water (food: wine)	Literature corpus	10552650, 35396186, 36781893 +6
1108 ppb	water (food: tea)	Literature corpus	39877541

Retronasal / in-mouth

39.3 ppb – 10050 ppb

Tasted rather than smelled — a different sense, not comparable.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
39.3 ppb SIDA	water_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
10050 ppb	water_flavor	Leffingwell	—

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 (33.5 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 9 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
liver	600000.0	17910 ⚡	PMID 27621706
grape	100000.0	2985 ⚡	PMID 21871629
milk	982.5	29.3 ⚡	Corpus paper
wine	42.4	1.27	Corpus paper
tea	18.4	0.55	Corpus paper
honey	10.6	0.32	Corpus paper
coffee	3.0	0.09	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 maltol. 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 maltol in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

liver

measured · OAV 17910.45

268 cmpds

363 cmpds

565 cmpds

364 cmpds