octen-3-ol

floral alcohol Key food odorant

Found in 5 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.

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

Properties

Odor description: mushroom, earthy, green, fungal
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 1.0 ppb 1 published value · see all 3 with sources
CAS number: 3391-86-4
Retention index: 987

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

? Partial match

FEMA number: 4492
GRAS publication: GRAS 24
FEMA primary name: (R)-(-)-1-Octen-3-ol

Reported use levels (ppm by food category)

Typical vs maximum reported addition levels in finished food. Use as a regulatory ceiling reference — verify against the current GRAS publication for your product category.

Food category	Typical (ppm)	Maximum (ppm)
baked goods	4	11
beverages (alcoholic)	0.5	1
beverages (nonalcoholic)	1	1
chewing gum	0.02	0.02
condiments/ relishes	2	5
frozen dairy	1	1
gelatins/ puddings	1	2
gravies	2	3
meat products	4	5
processed vegetables	12	20
snack foods	0.5	0.5
soft candy	1	2
soups	3	5

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. 1 related FEMA record for this name — verify the exact substance for regulatory use.

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.

fatty FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

green, woody, earthy, mushroom FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

camphor, pine FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

apple, mushroom, pine, banana, chemical, burnt FlavorDB 2.0

mushroom, earthy, green, fungal shown above Llm Adjudicated

—

banana, mushroom, chemical Flavordb Odor Column

—

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

3 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

1.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1.0 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

7.0 ppb – 959 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
7.0 ppb	water (food: fish)	Literature corpus	—
959 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	—

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 (4.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 3 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
soybean sauce	939750.0	234938 ⚡	—
fish oil	430000.0	107500 ⚡	DOI
grape	125000.0	31250 ⚡	PMID 34623142
lard	100000.0	25000 ⚡	PMID 40029871
olive	25000.0	6250 ⚡	DOI
lamb	22370.0	5592 ⚡	PMID 36866058
milk	10000.0	2500 ⚡	PMID 38379545
crab	10000.0	2500 ⚡	DOI
sourdough	3420.0	855 ⚡	DOI
melon	2000.0	500 ⚡	PMC12146550
mutton	658.1	165 ⚡	PMID 36330139
potato	170.0	42.5 ⚡	PMC11719381
beetroot	150.0	37.5 ⚡	—
olive oil	50.0	12.5 ⚡	Corpus paper
shrimp	15.0	3.75	DOI
soybean	3.5	0.88	PMID 37965015
beef	2.7	0.67	PMID 41705205
mushroom	0.5	0.13	DOI

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 octen-3-ol. 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 octen-3-ol in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

38 cmpds

201 cmpds

268 cmpds

407 cmpds