propionaldehyde

green aldehyde Key food odorant

Found in 492 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C3H6O
Molecular weight: 58.08 g/mol
PubChem CID: 527 — full record on PubChem

Key food odorant (intermediary)

Dunkel et al. 2014

Identified in the meta-analysis of 227 food samples as one of 57 intermediary odorants — appears in 5–25% of foods.

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

Properties

Odor description: pungent, solvent, earthy, nutty
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 23.2 ppb – 37.0 ppb median 30.1 ppb · 2 published values · see all 14 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 123-38-6

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 2923
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: PROPIONALDEHYDE

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

propanal

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.

solvent, pungent Flavornet Cas

—

alcohol, cocoa, earthy, nutty, pungent, solvent, whiskey, wine FlavorDB 2.0

433

at 5.00 - 10.00 ppm. FlavorDB 2.0

pungent, solvent, earthy, nutty shown above Llm Adjudicated

—

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

14 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

23.2 ppb – 37.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
23.2 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—
37.0 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 3 studies	—

In a food matrix

0.890 ppb – 523 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.890 ppb	water (food: coffee)	Literature corpus	—
2.0 ppb	water (food: fish)	Literature corpus	—
9.5 ppb	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	—
103 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	—
117 ppb	water (food: peach)	Literature corpus	—
523 ppb	water (food: tea)	Literature corpus	—

Retronasal / in-mouth

134 ppb – 170 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
134 ppb SIDA	oil_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies	—
170 ppb SIDA	water_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

In air

1.0 ppb – 2.0 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1.0 ppb	air	Nagata 2003	—
2.0 ppb	air (C2_cometto_muniz_abraham)	Cometto-Muñiz (PMC)	—

Other matrix

9.4 ppb – 86.0 ppb

Measured in a non-aqueous medium (oil, starch, cellulose).

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
9.4 ppb SIDA	oil_orthonasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
86.0 ppb SIDA	cellulose	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 (30.125 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 14 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
tea	526.0	17.5 ⚡	Corpus paper
peach	523.2	17.4 ⚡	Corpus paper
coffee	2.5	0.08	Corpus paper
fish	1.0	0.03	—

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 propionaldehyde. 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 propionaldehyde in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

617 cmpds

375 cmpds

507 cmpds

158 cmpds