1,2-dimethylbenzene

woody hydrocarbon

Found in 14 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C8H10
Molecular weight: 106.16 g/mol
PubChem CID: 7237 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: geranium, sweet, solvent
Odor threshold — in air: 380 ppb 1 published value · see all 1 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 95-47-6
Retention index: 874

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.

Also filed as

1,2-dimethyl benzene o-xylene

Same molecule, unified here — previously counted and displayed as separate compounds.

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.

geranium Flavornet Cas, FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

solvent FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

geranium, sweet, solvent shown above Llm Adjudicated

—

fruity, coconut Flavordb Odor Column

—

camphor 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

1 measured value 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 air

380 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
380 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.

Where you'd actually smell it

Odor Activity Value = measured concentration ÷ odor threshold (1000.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 1 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
tea	465.9	0.47	Corpus paper

Concentrations from PubMed Central Open Access papers (free literature corpus, MIT-style licensed). Copper = OAV ≥ 10 (strongly perceptible). Green = OAV ≥ 1 (perceptible).

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?
air	450.2 µg/L air	0.38–1.8e+03	6	4	no (3.3 decades)
food matrix	450.2 ppb	0.28–3e+03	10	10	no (4.0 decades)
oil	1600 ppb	1.6e+03–1.6e+03	1	1	one paper
unstated	450 ppb	0.38–7e+03	14	12	yes
water	450 ppb	50–450	3	3	yes

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain 1,2-dimethylbenzene. 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 1,2-dimethylbenzene in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

87 cmpds

153 cmpds

✓1 292 cmpds

✓1 302 cmpds