5-methylpyrazine

Key food odorant

Found in 4 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: roasted, nutty, cocoa
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 246 ppb – 1100 ppb median 673 ppb · 2 published values · see all 4 with sources
CAS number: 14667-55-1

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

? Partial match

FEMA number: 3154
GRAS publication: GRAS 4
FEMA primary name: 2-ETHYL-5-METHYLPYRAZINE

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

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. 1 related FEMA record for this name — verify the exact substance for regulatory use.

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.

Also filed as

5-methyl-pyrazine

Same molecule, unified here — previously counted and displayed as separate compounds.

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.

fruity, woody, sweet, butter, nutty FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

butter, caramel, nutty, roasted, toasted, roasty, malty, potato FlavorDB 2.0

roasted, nutty, cocoa shown above Llm Adjudicated

—

caramel, nutty, roasted, toasted Flavordb Odor Column

—

butter Flavordb Odor Column

—

caramel, nutty, roasty, malty, potato Flavordb Odor Column

—

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

4 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

246 ppb – 1100 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
246 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies	—
1100 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

Retronasal / in-mouth

71.0 ppb

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

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

Other matrix

290 ppb

Measured in a non-aqueous medium (oil, starch, cellulose).

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
290 ppb	oil (sunflower oil) (food: cocoa beans)	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 (245.5 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 4 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
flour	20000.0	81.5 ⚡	DOI
wheat	0.1	0.00	—
coffee	0.1	0.00	—

Concentrations from PubMed Central Open Access papers (free literature corpus, MIT-style licensed). Copper = OAV ≥ 10 (strongly perceptible). Green = OAV ≥ 1 (perceptible).

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	1.353e+04 µg/L air	1.9–1.22e+05	10	8	no (4.5 decades)
ethanol solution	6e-05 ppb	6e-05–6e-05	1	1	one paper
food matrix	250 ppb	0.25–6e+04	17	17	no (4.2 decades)
oil	200 ppb	27–2.7e+04	9	7	no (3.0 decades)
unstated	1000 ppb	30–1.22e+05	37	28	no (3.0 decades)
water	200 ppb	1.8–3e+04	19	19	no (2.7 decades)

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain 5-methylpyrazine. 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 5-methylpyrazine in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

128 cmpds

201 cmpds

407 cmpds

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 5-methylpyrazine, or compare two ingredients side-by-side.