(-)-carvone

minty terpenoid Key food odorant

Found in 4 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C10H14O
Molecular weight: 150.22 g/mol
PubChem CID: 439570 — full record on PubChem

Key food odorant (individualist)

Dunkel et al. 2014

Identified in the meta-analysis of 227 food samples as one of 151 individualist odorants — appears in <5% of foods, carries the diagnostic signature of specific ingredients.

Source: Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 7124–7143

Properties

Odor description: mint
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 50.0 ppb 1 published value · see all 4 with sources
Volatility: medium
CAS number: 6485-40-1

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.

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

—

herbal, mint, minty, spearmint, sweet 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.

Orthonasal, in clean water

50.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
50.0 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

7.0 ppb – 160 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
7.0 ppb	water (food: orange juice (reconstituted from concentrate))	Literature corpus	—
160 ppb	water (food: orange juice (reconstituted from concentrate))	Literature corpus	—

In air

0.030 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.030 ppb	air (food: dill seed)	Literature corpus	—

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.

Thresholds in published tables

Numbers printed in open-access papers, grouped by the medium the table states. Median and full range of the values; “agree” means two or more papers whose middle 80% of values sit within 100×. Not reviewed.

Medium	Median	Range	Values	Papers	Papers agree?
food matrix	2 ppb	2–2	1	1	one paper
unstated	85 ppb	7–85	3	3	yes
water	7 ppb	7–7	1	1	one paper

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain (-)-carvone. 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 (-)-carvone in it.

38 cmpds

75 cmpds

107 cmpds

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