methyl cinnamate

fruity ester Key food odorant

Found in 32 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C10H10O2
Molecular weight: 162.18 g/mol
PubChem CID: 637520 — 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: strawberry
Odor threshold — in a food matrix: 6.4 ppb 1 published value · see all 2 with sources
Volatility: medium
CAS number: 103-26-4
Retention index: 1384

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 2698
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: METHYL CINNAMATE

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

methylcinnamate

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.

strawberry shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

—

sweet FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

floral, woody FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

balsam, cherry, strawberry, sweet FlavorDB 2.0

cinnamyl balsamic fruity strawberry FlavorDB 2.0

sweet balsam strawberry cherry cinnamon 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

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

6.4 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
6.4 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	12467918, 28864886, 40003692

Retronasal / in-mouth

11.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
11.0 ppb SIDA	water_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

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 (6.449999999999999 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 2 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
mango	0.1	0.02	—

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 methyl cinnamate. 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 methyl cinnamate in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

✓1 14 cmpds

26 cmpds

65 cmpds

81 cmpds