trimethylamine

roasted amine

Found in 68 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C3H9N
Molecular weight: 59.11 g/mol
PubChem CID: 1146 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: fishy, ammoniacal
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 0.470 ppb – 0.715 ppb median 0.593 ppb · 2 published values · see all 6 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 75-50-3
Retention index: 846

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 3241
GRAS publication: GRAS 4
FEMA primary name: TRIMETHYLAMINE

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.

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

—

fish, fishy, fruity, oily, rancid, sweaty FlavorDB 2.0

fish, fishy, oily, rancid, sweaty, fruity FlavorDB 2.0

fishy 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

0.470 ppb – 0.715 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.470 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
0.715 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

10.0 ppb – 103 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
10.0 ppb	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	—
103 ppb	water (food: fish)	Literature corpus	—

In air

0.00044 ppb – 0.032 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.00044 ppb	air (food: reference standard (air))	Literature corpus	—
0.032 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.

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain trimethylamine. 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 trimethylamine in it.

✓1 18 cmpds

24 cmpds

27 cmpds

32 cmpds