Sandalwood is an essential oil with 5 known flavor compounds. The most distinctive molecule is alpha-santalol. It pairs most strongly with potato. Sandalwood appears in 2 recipes.
Compounds ranked by rarity — the higher the score, the more distinctive to this ingredient.
Of the ~226 molecules that drive perceived food aroma (Dunkel et al. 2014), Sandalwood's inventory contains 1. Most of the other 4 compounds are below detection threshold.
Generalist = appears in >25% of foods (Maillard / fermentation products). Individualist = appears in <5% of foods (carries signature notes). Threshold values are in clean water — the actual perception threshold in a food matrix can differ substantially.
How Sandalwood's 5 known compounds break down by aroma category. Percentages are of compounds with a known label.
4 of 5 are distinctive to sandalwood — they appear in under 10% of foods. The remainder are the background most foods share.
Ordered by measured impact in sandalwood — concentration against odour threshold where both are published, then by how distinctive the molecule is across the graph. Molecules measured here but not established as odorants sit below those that are.
Ranked by how often cooks actually use them together, across 453,403 recipes — the familiar answer first. Each pairing still carries its molecular score and shared-compound count; only the ORDER differs. Counts cover every characterised molecule the two ingredients have in common, not only the aroma-active ones, so they can exceed an ingredient’s aroma-compound count. For the chemistry-first view — where the surprising pairings live — see the molecular network below, the side-by-side comparison, or the Pairing Tool.
Sandalwood surrounded by its top 10 compound-sharing relatives. Spoke thickness = shared volatile count.
Compare Sandalwood side-by-side
Drawn from PubMed + Europe PMC + food-science journals. Click any title to read the full abstract on the original source.
<h4>Context</h4>Kuanxiong Aerosol (KXA), composed of volatile oils from sandalwood (<i>Santalum album L.</i>), galangal (<i>Alpiniae Officinarum Rhizoma</i>), asarum (<i>Asari Radi... Read abstract →
Laocong Shuixian (LCSX), a premium Wuyi rock tea derived from aged Shuixian tea trees, is valued by consumers for its distinctive "Cong flavor"-a unique aroma profile characterized... Read abstract →
This study deciphered the aroma differences in three <i>Kadsura coccinea</i> cultivars (F023, F054, F055) through integrated volatile-omics and sensory analysis. HS-SPME-GC-MS iden... Read abstract →
To elucidate the regional flavor characteristics of sun-dried green tea (SDT) and their underlying influencing factors, a comprehensive analysis was conducted using metabolomics an... Read abstract →
Sandalwood (Santalum album L.) is one of the costliest wood in the world and its characteristic aroma is highly prized in various ancient medicines for its innumerable therapeutic... Read abstract →
