2-hydroxy-3-butanone

caramel ketone Key food odorant

Found in 3 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

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: caramel-like, roast
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 2900 ppb 1 published value · see all 2 with sources
CAS number: 513-86-0
Retention index: 1277

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.

Published thresholds

2 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

2900 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
2900 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies	—

Retronasal / in-mouth

100 ppb

Tasted rather than smelled — a different sense, not comparable.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
100 ppb SIDA	water_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

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?
air	14 µg/L air	0.038–2.98e+03	7	4	no (3.8 decades)
ethanol solution	136.5 ppb	14–259	2	2	yes
food matrix	140 ppb	0.014–3e+05	19	18	no (2.8 decades)
oil	120 ppb	14–120	5	3	yes
unstated	204.5 ppb	0.055–1.5e+05	32	30	no (2.7 decades)
water	14 ppb	0.0008–120	11	9	yes

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain 2-hydroxy-3-butanone. 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-hydroxy-3-butanone in it.

85 cmpds

146 cmpds

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