methyl isobutyrate

fruity ester Key food odorant

Found in 24 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C5H10O2
Molecular weight: 102.13 g/mol
PubChem CID: 11039 — 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: flower
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 0.030 ppb – 7.0 ppb median 3.5 ppb · 2 published values · see all 5 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 547-63-7
Retention index: 734

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.

Also filed as

methyl 2-methylpropanoate

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.

flower shown above Flavornet Cas

—

apple, floral, flower, fruity, pineapple FlavorDB 2.0

Sweet, ethereal, fruity and juicy fruit 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

5 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

0.030 ppb – 7.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.030 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
7.0 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

1.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1.0 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	29893713

Retronasal / in-mouth

0.020 ppb

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

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

In air

1.9 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1.9 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.

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain methyl isobutyrate. 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 isobutyrate in it.

59 cmpds

112 cmpds

175 cmpds

220 cmpds