2,3-butanedione
dairy ketone Key food odorantFound in 515 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.
Look up another compound — search by name, CAS number, PubChem CID, or FEMA #.
- Formula
- C4H6O2
- Molecular weight
- 86.09 g/mol
- PubChem CID
- 650 — 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: buttery.
Properties
- Odor description
- butter, sweet, cream
- Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water
- 2.8 ppb – 18.0 ppb median 5.5 ppb · 4 published values · see all 27 with sources
- Volatility
- high
- CAS number
- 431-03-8
- Retention index
- 943
FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use
- FEMA number
- 2370
- GRAS publication
- GRAS 3
- FEMA primary name
- DIACETYL-2,3-Butanedione; Biacetyl; Dimethyl
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.
An authoritative source gives butter, cream, which disagrees with the description shown above. Held rather than switched: the authority is terser than the corpus here, and which should win is a rule we have not set.
Published thresholds
27 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
2.8 ppb – 18.0 ppbThe reference measurement — smelled in water. OAV is computed against this.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.8 ppb | water/ethanol 6:4 (food: american bourbon whisky) | Literature corpus | 30972045 |
| 4.4 ppb | water_odor | Leffingwell | — |
| 6.5 ppb SIDA | water | Rychlik 1998 · 3 studies | — |
| 18.0 ppb SIDA | water | Dunkel 2014 | — |
In a food matrix
0.390 ppb – 44.0 ppbMeasured in a real food, where the matrix shifts detection — not a clean-water value.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.390 ppb | water (food: lime) | Literature corpus | 30972045 |
| 0.640 ppb | water (food: unknown) | Literature corpus | 30972045 |
| 0.940 ppb | water (food: longjing green tea infusion) | Literature corpus | 30972045 |
| 0.960 ppb | water (food: green tea infusion (jingshan cha)) | Literature corpus | 30972045 |
| 1.0 ppb | water (food: reference standard (water)) | Literature corpus | 30972045 |
| 4.0 ppb | water (food: smoked cooked loin (pork)) | Literature corpus | 30972045 |
| 6.5 ppb | water (food: wheat porridge / bread crumb) | Literature corpus | 30972045 |
| 6.5 ppb | water (food: extruded wheat flour) | Literature corpus | 30972045 |
| 15.0 ppb | water (food: coffee) | Literature corpus | 30972045 |
| 44.0 ppb | water (food: fish) | Literature corpus | 30972045 |
Retronasal / in-mouth
5.0 ppb – 32.5 ppbTasted rather than smelled — a different sense, not comparable.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5.0 ppb | water_flavor | Leffingwell | — |
| 5.0 ppb SIDA | water_retronasal | Rychlik 1998 · 3 studies | — |
| 32.5 ppb SIDA | oil_retronasal | Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies | — |
In air
0.050 ppbAirborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.050 ppb | air | Nagata 2003 | — |
Other matrix
2.8 ppb – 100 ppbMeasured in a non-aqueous medium (oil, starch, cellulose).
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.8 ppb | ethanol/water (food: rum / red wine) | Literature corpus | 30972045 |
| 2.8 ppb | ethanol/water 40/60 (food: rum (aged)) | Literature corpus | 30972045 |
| 2.8 ppb | ethanol/water 40/60 (food: rum (young)) | Literature corpus | 30972045 |
| 4.5 ppb | oil (sunflower oil) (food: gouda cheese) | Literature corpus | 30972045 |
| 6.5 ppb SIDA | starch | Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies | — |
| 10.0 ppb SIDA | oil_orthonasal | Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies | — |
| 25.0 ppb SIDA | cellulose | Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies | — |
| 66.0 ppb SIDA | beer_orthonasal | Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies | — |
| 100 ppb | wine matrix (12% ethanol) (food: rum / red wine) | Literature corpus | 30972045 |
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 (4.45 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 27 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.
| Food | Concentration (ppb) | OAV | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| yogurt | 95000.0 | 21348 ⚡ | PMID 40438204 |
| whey | 30000.0 | 6742 ⚡ | DOI |
| sausage | 7920.0 | 1780 ⚡ | DOI |
| coffee | 880.0 | 198 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| wine | 750.0 | 169 ⚡ | PMID 30704594 |
| cocoa | 190.0 | 42.7 ⚡ | — |
| fish | 43.0 | 9.66 | Corpus paper |
| date | 3.0 | 0.67 | PMID 35300387 |
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 2,3-butanedione. 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 2,3-butanedione in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.
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