3-pentanone

fruity ketone

Found in 388 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C5H10O
Molecular weight: 86.13 g/mol
PubChem CID: 7288 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: ether
Odor threshold — in water, medium unconfirmed: 2.0 ppb 1 published value · see all 1 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 96-22-0
Retention index: 698

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.

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.

ether shown above Flavornet Cas

—

acetone, ether, ethereal FlavorDB 2.0

378

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 water, medium unconfirmed

2.0 ppb

Reported as water, but the medium could not be confirmed from the source — not used for OAV.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
2.0 ppb	water (unverified; relabelled from air, audit 2026-10-14)	PMC open access	—

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	239 µg/L air	40–964	3	3	yes
food matrix	1e+04 ppb	2–7.1e+04	7	7	no (4.5 decades)
unstated	3737 ppb	3–2e+05	11	7	no (3.7 decades)
water	60 ppb	60–60	1	1	one paper

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain 3-pentanone. 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 3-pentanone in it.

62 cmpds

66 cmpds

83 cmpds

83 cmpds