Skip to main content
Compound sheet

Aroma molecule · aldehyde

4-anisaldehyde

Smells ofsweet

Found in 1 ingredient. We hold no measured concentration for it in any of them yet, so we cannot say where it is strong enough to smell.

Get this data by API See star anise

Working on a formulation or a product line? This compound data is available by API for R&D teams.

Formula
—
Mass
136.15 g/mol
CAS
123-11-5
PubChem
—
Threshold · a food
27.0 ppb
Class
aldehyde
Status
Key food odorant

01How little it takes

  • in water 30
  • in a food 38.5
  • in oilpapers disagree 120

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

02Where it turns up

  • Herbs & spices1

of the 1 ingredient that contain it, by food group

03What it travels with

Too few ingredients to say what it travels with.

What does 4-anisaldehyde smell like?

Sources describe it as sweet.

It is a key food odorant (individualist): identified in the meta-analysis of 227 food samples as one of 151 individualist odorants, which appear in under 5% of foods and carry the signature of specific ingredients. Source: Dunkel et al. 2014, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 53, 7124–7143

Which foods contain 4-anisaldehyde?

We list 1 ingredient 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 4-anisaldehyde in it. ✓n = sources that recorded the link.

How strong is 4-anisaldehyde?

In a food matrix: 27.0 ppb, from 1 published value. Thresholds printed in paper tables for oil are about 4× the ones for water.

Published thresholds

1 measured value 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.

In a food matrix · 27.0 ppb ppbMeasured in a real food, where the matrix shifts detection — not a clean-water value.
ThresholdMatrixSourcePaper
27.0 ppb water (food: reference standard (water)) Literature corpus —

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 42.5 µg/L air 27–47 42 yes
food matrix 38.5 ppb 30–47 22 yes
oil 120 ppb 120–120 11 one paper
unstated 13.6 ppb 0.01–34 66 no (3.4 decades)
water 30 ppb 2.6–123 33 yes

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 4-anisaldehyde 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.

4-anisaldehyde questions

What does 4-anisaldehyde smell like?

Sources describe 4-anisaldehyde as sweet. It is one of the key food odorants identified by Dunkel et al. (2014).

Which foods contain 4-anisaldehyde?

We list 1 ingredient that contain 4-anisaldehyde.

How strong is 4-anisaldehyde?

The median of 1 published odour thresholds in a food is 27.0 ppb. Published values in oil are about 4 times higher than in water.

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

Into the chemistry?

Get a molecule-level pairing breakdown each week — which ingredients share a compound, and why it matters at the table. Free, no spam.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Try the pairing tools to see which ingredient combinations rely on 4-anisaldehyde, or compare two ingredients side by side.

Cite this analysis
Plain text
Compound Kitchen (2026). 4-anisaldehyde compound data sheet. https://compkitchen.com/compound/4-anisaldehyde. Accessed 2026-11-03.
BibTeX
@misc{compkitchen_compound_4_anisaldehyde_compound_data_sheet_2026,
  title  = {4-anisaldehyde compound data sheet},
  author = {{Compound Kitchen}},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://compkitchen.com/compound/4-anisaldehyde},
  note   = {Accessed: 2026-11-03}
}

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