n-butanol

floral alcohol Key food odorant

Found in 3 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

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. Characteristic odor: alcoholic.

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

Properties

Odor description: medicine, fruit
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 500 ppb – 890 ppb median 695 ppb · 2 published values · see all 8 with sources
CAS number: 71-36-3

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: None
GRAS publication: GRAS 1
FEMA primary name: n-Butanol

Use-level matrix not extracted for this substance — check the source publication for current ppm guidance.

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33.

Published thresholds

8 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

500 ppb – 890 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
500 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—
890 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies	—

In a food matrix

500 ppb – 590 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
500 ppb	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	—
590 ppb	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	—

Retronasal / in-mouth

500 ppb – 200000 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
500 ppb SIDA	water_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
200000 ppb SIDA	beer_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

In air

0.668 ppb – 7.9 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.668 ppb	air (food: reference standard (air))	Literature corpus	—
7.9 ppb	air (C2_cometto_muniz_abraham)	Cometto-Muñiz (PMC)	—

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 n-butanol. 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 n-butanol in it.

320 cmpds

364 cmpds

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