2-hexenal
herbal aldehyde Key food odorantFound in 73 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.
Look up another compound — search by name, CAS number, PubChem CID, or FEMA #.
- Formula
- C6H10O
- Molecular weight
- 98.14 g/mol
- PubChem CID
- 5281168 — full record on PubChem
Key food odorant (individualist)
Dunkel et al. 2014Identified 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. Characteristic odor: green, apple-like.
Properties
- Odor description
- green, leafy, apple, fruity, almond
- Odor threshold — in a food matrix
- 2.5 ppb – 1202 ppb median 119 ppb · 10 published values · see all 10 with sources
- Volatility
- high
- CAS number
- 505-57-7
FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use
- FEMA number
- 2560
- GRAS publication
- GRAS 3
- FEMA primary name
- 2-HEXENAL
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.
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.
Published thresholds
10 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
2.5 ppb – 1202 ppbMeasured in a real food, where the matrix shifts detection — not a clean-water value.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.130 ppb | water (food: melon) | Literature corpus | — |
| Flagged: 916× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden. | |||
| 0.950 ppb | water (food: tomato) | Literature corpus | — |
| Flagged: 125× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden. | |||
| 2.5 ppb | water (food: tea) | Literature corpus | — |
| 17.0 ppb | water (food: goat milk) | Literature corpus | — |
| 63.3 ppb | water (food: apple) | Literature corpus | — |
| 175 ppb | water (food: unknown) | Literature corpus | — |
| 180 ppb | water (food: fish) | Literature corpus | — |
| 190 ppb | water (food: reference standard (water)) | Literature corpus | — |
| 853 ppb | water (food: bread) | Literature corpus | — |
| 1202 ppb | water (food: olive oil) | 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.
Where you'd actually smell it
Odor Activity Value = measured concentration ÷ odor threshold (119.03500000000001 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 10 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.
| Food | Concentration (ppb) | OAV | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| fennel | 100000.0 | 840 ⚡ | — |
| strawberry | 44000.0 | 370 ⚡ | — |
| olive oil | 26510.0 | 223 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| vinegar | 20000.0 | 168 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| olive | 20000.0 | 168 ⚡ | DOI |
| extra virgin olive oil | 11000.0 | 92.4 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| tangerine | 10470.0 | 88.0 ⚡ | PMID 28158965 |
| tomato | 10000.0 | 84.0 ⚡ | DOI |
| turkey | 6277.5 | 52.7 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| orange | 2680.0 | 22.5 ⚡ | DOI |
| milk | 1613.9 | 13.6 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| corn | 1565.9 | 13.2 ⚡ | PMID 35571943 |
| bread | 846.0 | 7.11 | Corpus paper |
| kiwifruit | 499.8 | 4.20 | — |
| mango | 84.0 | 0.71 | DOI |
| apple | 10.0 | 0.08 | PMID 37021304 |
| shrimp | 5.0 | 0.04 | DOI |
| lard | 2.0 | 0.02 | Corpus paper |
| tea | 2.4 | 0.02 | Corpus paper |
| rice | 0.0 | 0.00 | PMID 40894516 |
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-hexenal. 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-hexenal in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.
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