pyridine

roasted nitrogen compound

Found in 80 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C5H5N
Molecular weight: 79.10 g/mol
PubChem CID: 1049 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: sour, putrid, fishy
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 2000 ppb 1 published value · see all 6 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 110-86-1
Retention index: 960

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 2966
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: PYRIDINE

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.

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.

sour, putrid, fishy shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

—

amine, fishy, putrid, rancid, sickening, sour FlavorDB 2.0

unwanted fat flavor 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

6 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

2000 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
2000 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

0.764 ppb – 14.6 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.764 ppb	water (food: coffee)	Literature corpus	38480775
0.900 ppb	water (food: tea)	Literature corpus	24053239, 24594176, 28708375 +10
7.0 ppb	water (food: fish)	Literature corpus	24594176, 36144849, 37003052
14.6 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	24053239, 28708375, 29143841 +6

In air

63.0 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
63.0 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.

Where you'd actually smell it

Odor Activity Value = measured concentration ÷ odor threshold (7.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 6 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
fish	6.0	0.86	Corpus paper
coffee	4.1	0.58	Corpus paper

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

507 cmpds

27 cmpds

37 cmpds

39 cmpds