vanillin
caramel aldehyde Key food odorantFound in 463 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.
Look up another compound — search by name, CAS number, PubChem CID, or FEMA #.
- Formula
- C8H8O3
- Molecular weight
- 152.15 g/mol
- PubChem CID
- 1183 — full record on PubChem
Key food odorant (generalist)
Dunkel et al. 2014Identified in the meta-analysis of 227 food samples as one of 16 generalist odorants — appears in >25% of foods, typically from generic Maillard, lipid-oxidation, or fermentation pathways. Characteristic odor: vanilla-like.
Properties
- Odor description
- vanilla, sweet, cream
- Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water
- 22.0 ppb – 25.0 ppb median 23.5 ppb · 2 published values · see all 23 with sources
- Volatility
- medium
- CAS number
- 121-33-5
- Retention index
- 1958
FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use
- FEMA number
- 3107
- GRAS publication
- GRAS 3
- FEMA primary name
- VANILLIN
Use-level matrix not extracted for this substance — check the source publication for current ppm guidance.
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.
Same molecule, unified here — previously counted and displayed as separate compounds.
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.
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
23 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
22.0 ppb – 25.0 ppbThe reference measurement — smelled in water. OAV is computed against this.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 22.0 ppb SIDA | water/ethanol 6:4 (food: american bourbon whisky) | Literature corpus | 18570373, 23517540, 24594176 +28 |
| 25.0 ppb SIDA | water | Rychlik 1998 · 3 studies | — |
In a food matrix
0.436 ppb – 210 ppbMeasured in a real food, where the matrix shifts detection — not a clean-water value.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.436 ppb | water (food: rice) | Literature corpus | 28489041, 29086814 |
| 0.850 ppb SIDA | water (food: strawberry) | Literature corpus | 18570373, 23517540, 24594176 +28 |
| 9.0 ppb | water (food: lemon) | Literature corpus | 34853254 |
| 12.0 ppb | water (food: tea) | Literature corpus | 36323840 |
| 13.0 ppb SIDA | water (food: longjing green tea infusion) | Literature corpus | 18570373, 23517540, 24594176 +28 |
| 25.0 ppb SIDA | water (food: orange juice (reconstituted from concentrate)) | Literature corpus | 18570373, 23517540, 24594176 +28 |
| 25.0 ppb SIDA | water (food: hand-squeezed grapefruit juice) | Literature corpus | 18570373, 23517540, 24594176 +28 |
| 25.0 ppb SIDA | water (food: wheat porridge / bread crumb) | Literature corpus | 18570373, 23517540, 24594176 +28 |
| 33.0 ppb | water (food: fish) | Literature corpus | 24594176, 36144849, 37003052 |
| 49.1 ppb | water (food: beer) | Literature corpus | 41730959 |
| 53.0 ppb SIDA | water (food: reference standard (water)) | Literature corpus | 18570373, 23517540, 24594176 +28 |
| 60.7 ppb | water (food: tomato) | Literature corpus | 38253713 |
| 90.0 ppb SIDA | water (food: unknown) | Literature corpus | 18570373, 23517540, 26299134 +14 |
| 193 ppb | water (food: wine) | Literature corpus | 27211676, 30270444, 32619948 +2 |
| 210 ppb SIDA | water (food: beef vegetable gravy) | Literature corpus | 18570373, 23517540, 24594176 +28 |
| 210 ppb SIDA | water (food: pork vegetable gravy) | Literature corpus | 18570373, 23517540, 24594176 +28 |
Retronasal / in-mouth
30.0 ppbTasted rather than smelled — a different sense, not comparable.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30.0 ppb SIDA | water_retronasal | Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies | — |
Other matrix
4.6 ppb – 200 ppbMeasured in a non-aqueous medium (oil, starch, cellulose).
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4.6 ppb SIDA | starch | Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies | — |
| 22.0 ppb SIDA | ethanol/water (food: rum / red wine) | Literature corpus | 18570373, 23517540, 24594176 +28 |
| 22.0 ppb SIDA | ethanol/water 40/60 (food: rum (aged)) | Literature corpus | 18570373, 23517540, 24594176 +28 |
| 200 ppb SIDA | wine matrix (12% ethanol) (food: rum / red wine) | Literature corpus | 18570373, 23517540, 24594176 +28 |
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 (25.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 23 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.
| Food | Concentration (ppb) | OAV | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| rice | 93.0 | 3.72 | Corpus paper |
| wine | 48.5 | 1.94 | Corpus paper |
| fish | 32.0 | 1.28 | Corpus paper |
| beer | 9.4 | 0.38 | Corpus paper |
| tea | 5.0 | 0.20 | Corpus paper |
| tomato | 3.6 | 0.14 | Corpus paper |
| lemon | 2.5 | 0.10 | Corpus paper |
| strawberry | 0.0 | 0.00 | — |
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 shareEvery ingredient known to contain vanillin. 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 vanillin in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.
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