succinic acid

sour acid

Found in 446 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C4H6O4
Molecular weight: 118.09 g/mol
PubChem CID: 1110 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: odorless, sour
Odor threshold — in a food matrix: 0.660 ppb – 10.5 ppb median 3.1 ppb · 4 published values · see all 4 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 110-15-6
Retention index: 1184

Not in FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. Of 3,367 listed flavoring substances, none match this compound name. May still be food-safe under other regulatory routes (FDA 21 CFR 172, EFSA, JECFA) — check femaflavor.org for the authoritative current list.

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.

odorless, sour shown above Llm Adjudicated, FlavorDB 2.0 2 sources agree

379

odorless FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

sour acidic 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

4 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

0.660 ppb – 10.5 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.660 ppb	water (food: onion)	Literature corpus	21534545, 23497242, 25293630 +7
2.0 ppb	water (food: rice)	Literature corpus	33164148
4.2 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	23497242, 25293630, 29686619 +5
10.5 ppb	water (food: milk)	Literature corpus	21534545

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 (3.075 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 4 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
milk	147.0	47.8 ⚡	—
onion	10.6	3.45	—
rice	1.0	0.33	—

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

363 cmpds

369 cmpds

432 cmpds

69 cmpds