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phenyl acetate

fruity ester

Found in 6 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis structure of phenyl acetate
2D Lewis Structure
Formula
C8H8O2
Molecular weight
136.15 g/mol
PubChem CID
31229 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description
floral, sweet, rose, honey
Odor threshold — in a food matrix
2.8 ppb 1 published value · see all 1 with sources
Volatility
high
CAS number
122-79-2
Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match
FEMA number
3958
GRAS publication
GRAS 19
FEMA primary name
PHENYL ACETATE

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
phenylacetate

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.

floral, sweet, creamy, roasted, clove FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
1
chemical FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
1
floral, rose FlavorDB 2.0
1
chemical, floral, sweet, creamy, roasted, clove FlavorDB 2.0
1
floral, sweet, rose, honey shown above Llm Adjudicated
—
floral 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

1 measured value 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

2.8 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
2.8 ppb water (food: rice) Literature corpus 26973621

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

Food Concentration (ppb) OAV Source
rice 3.1 1.11 —

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 phenyl acetate. 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 phenyl acetate in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

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Try the pairing tools to see which ingredient combinations rely on phenyl acetate, or compare two ingredients side-by-side.