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Compound sheet

Aroma molecule · pyrazine

3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine

Smells ofgreen bell pepper, earthy, carrot, vegetal

Found in 3 ingredients. We hold no measured concentration for it in any of them yet, so we cannot say where it is strong enough to smell.

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Formula
—
Mass
166.22 g/mol
CAS
24168-70-5
PubChem
—
Threshold · water
0.002 ppb
Class
pyrazine
Status
Key food odorant

01How little it takes

  • in waterpapers disagree 0.0075
  • in a foodpapers disagree 0.23
  • in wine/beerpapers disagree 0.015
  • in oil 0.73

ppb, log scale · tick = median of published values, bar = full range, from open-access paper tables (not reviewed)

02Where it turns up

  • Fruit1
  • Vegetables1
  • Drinks1

of the 3 ingredients that contain it, by food group

03What it travels with

Too few ingredients to say what it travels with.

What does 3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine smell like?

Sources describe it as green bell pepper, earthy, carrot, vegetal.

It is a key food odorant (intermediary): identified in the meta-analysis of 227 food samples as one of 57 intermediary odorants, which appear in 5–25% of foods. Source: Dunkel et al. 2014, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 53, 7124–7143

How this molecule is described

  • green bell pepper, unripe vegetable FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree
  • green bell pepper, earthy, carrot, vegetal shown above Llm Adjudicated

Ordered by how many independent descriptor streams give each wording, then by how often it appears. The bar is replication (one source copied onto many ingredients scores high), not corroboration.

Which foods contain 3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine?

We list 3 ingredients that contain it, but presence is not the same as smell. What matters is how much is there compared with how little it takes to notice it. That ratio is the odour activity value (OAV): above 1, you can smell it.

Found in

Measured foods first, then real food profiles, then thin or composite records (marked). The figure beside each is how many compounds that ingredient has in total, not the amount of 3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine in it. ✓n = sources that recorded the link.

How strong is 3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine?

Orthonasal, in clean water: 0.001 ppb to 0.002 ppb, median 0.002 ppb, from 2 published values. Thresholds printed in paper tables for oil are about 97× the ones for water.

Published thresholds

7 measured values from the literature, grouped by what was measured: a threshold smelled in clean water, tasted, or measured in a real food are different quantities and are not pooled.

Orthonasal, in clean water · 0.001 ppb–0.002 ppb ppbThe reference measurement — smelled in water. OAV is computed against this.
ThresholdMatrixSourcePaper
0.001 ppb water_odor Leffingwell —
0.002 ppb SIDA water Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies —
In a food matrix · 0.001 ppb–0.003 ppb ppbMeasured in a real food, where the matrix shifts detection — not a clean-water value.
ThresholdMatrixSourcePaper
0.001 ppb water (food: longjing green tea infusion) Literature corpus —
0.003 ppb water (food: beef vegetable gravy) Literature corpus —
0.003 ppb water (food: pork vegetable gravy) Literature corpus —
Retronasal / in-mouth · 0.300 ppb ppbTasted rather than smelled — a different sense, not comparable.
ThresholdMatrixSourcePaper
0.300 ppb SIDA oil_retronasal Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies —
Other matrix · 0.500 ppb ppbMeasured in a non-aqueous medium (oil, starch, cellulose).
ThresholdMatrixSourcePaper
0.500 ppb SIDA oil_orthonasal 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, so every number here traces to a citable source.

Thresholds in published tables

MediumMedianRangeValuesPapersPapers agree?
air 0.005419 µg/L air 0.001–0.00984 21 one paper
food matrix 0.23 ppb 1e-06–0.46 22 no (5.7 decades)
model wine or beer 0.015 ppb 0.015–0.015 11 one paper
oil 0.73 ppb 0.46–1 22 yes
unstated 0.00484 ppb 0.001–0.0104 74 yes
water 0.0075 ppb 0.005–0.01 21 one paper

Numbers printed in open-access papers, grouped by the medium the table states. Median and full range; “agree” means two or more papers whose middle 80% of values sit within 100×. Not reviewed.

Is 3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine safe to eat?

Not in FEMA GRAS publications 1–33. Of 3,367 listed flavoring substances, none match this compound or its other names. It may still be food-safe under other regulatory routes (FDA 21 CFR 172, EFSA, JECFA); check femaflavor.org for the authoritative current list.

3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine questions

What does 3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine smell like?

Sources describe 3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine as green bell pepper, earthy, carrot and vegetal. It is one of the key food odorants identified by Dunkel et al. (2014).

Which foods contain 3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine?

We list 3 ingredients that contain 3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine.

How strong is 3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine?

The median of 2 published odour thresholds in water is 0.002 ppb (range 0.001 to 0.002 ppb). Published values in oil are about 97 times higher than in water.

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

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Cite this analysis
Plain text
Compound Kitchen (2026). 3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine compound data sheet. https://compkitchen.com/compound/3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine. Accessed 2026-11-05.
BibTeX
@misc{compkitchen_compound_3_sec_butyl_2_methoxypyrazine_compound_data_sheet_2026,
  title  = {3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine compound data sheet},
  author = {{Compound Kitchen}},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://compkitchen.com/compound/3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine},
  note   = {Accessed: 2026-11-05}
}

Methodology DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19719459 · CC BY 4.0 · Citations are a request, not a requirement.