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zingerone

fruity ketone

Found in 2 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis structure of zingerone
2D Lewis Structure
Formula
C11H14O3
Molecular weight
194.23 g/mol
PubChem CID
31211 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description
Spicy with a biting, lingering heat
Odor threshold — in a food matrix
52.0 ppb – 1658 ppb median 1418 ppb · 3 published values · see all 3 with sources
Volatility
medium
CAS number
122-48-5
Retention index
1656
Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match
FEMA number
3124
GRAS publication
GRAS 3
FEMA primary name
ZINGERONE

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.

Spicy with a biting, lingering heat shown above FlavorDB 2.0
1
sweet spicy phenolic ginger vanilla woody Flavordb Odor Column
—

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

3 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

52.0 ppb – 1658 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
52.0 ppb water (food: grape) Literature corpus 36890905
1418 ppb water (food: wine) Literature corpus 36890905, 39096421
1658 ppb water (food: unknown) Literature corpus 39096421

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 (1417.5 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 3 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food Concentration (ppb) OAV Source
grape 56.9 0.04 —
wine 36.5 0.03 —

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

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Try the pairing tools to see which ingredient combinations rely on zingerone, or compare two ingredients side-by-side.