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2-octanol

floral alcohol

Found in 19 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis structure of 2-octanol
2D Lewis Structure
Formula
C8H18O
Molecular weight
130.23 g/mol
PubChem CID
20083 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description
mushroom, fat
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water
9.0 ppb 1 published value · see all 2 with sources
Volatility
high
CAS number
123-96-6
Retention index
997
Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match
FEMA number
2801
GRAS publication
GRAS 3
FEMA primary name
2-OCTANOL

Use-level matrix not extracted for this substance — check the source publication for current ppm guidance.

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33.

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.

mushroom, fat shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree
—
fatty FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
1
fruity, coconut FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
1
chemical FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
1
herbal spicy green nasturtium earthy unripe banana mushroom FlavorDB 2.0
13
fat FlavorDB 2.0
1

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

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

9.0 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
9.0 ppb water PMC open access —

In a food matrix

71.0 ppb

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

Threshold Matrix Source Paper
71.0 ppb water (food: unknown) 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 (40.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 2 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food Concentration (ppb) OAV Source
lard 200500.0 5012 ⚡ PMC11076652
bread 200000.0 5000 ⚡ PMID 38840722
lime 200000.0 5000 ⚡ PMID 41267287
berry 200000.0 5000 ⚡ DOI
red wine 144000.0 3600 ⚡ Corpus paper
grape 100000.0 2500 ⚡ PMID 21871629
wine 100000.0 2500 ⚡ PMID 30833628
pepper 100000.0 2500 ⚡ PMID 38028623
baijiu 70000.0 1750 ⚡ PMID 36609631
cheese 25000.0 625 ⚡ PMID 33391244
beef 8820.0 220 ⚡ PMID 35495949
hazelnut 500.0 12.5 ⚡ PMID 35310662
white wine 25.9 0.65 PMID 40259345

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 share

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

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