pyruvic acid

dairy acid

Found in 23 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C3H4O3
Molecular weight: 88.06 g/mol
PubChem CID: 1060 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: sour, acetic, caramellic, sharp
Odor threshold — in a food matrix: 6.8 ppb – 8.3 ppb median 7.6 ppb · 2 published values · see all 2 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 127-17-3
Retention index: 1290

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 2970
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: PYRUVIC ACID

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.

acetic, caramellic, sharp, sour FlavorDB 2.0

PLEASANT SOUR, MILDLY BURNT CARAMEL FlavorDB 2.0

sour, acetic, caramellic, sharp 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

2 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.

In a food matrix

6.8 ppb – 8.3 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
6.8 ppb	water (food: milk)	Literature corpus	21534545
8.3 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	29686619

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 (7.5525 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 2 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
beer	1000.0	132 ⚡	—
milk	174.0	23.0 ⚡	—

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 pyruvic acid. 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 pyruvic acid in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

beer

measured · OAV 132.41

457 cmpds

363 cmpds

27 cmpds

34 cmpds