alpha-limonene

herbal terpenoid Key food odorant

Found in 2 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

Key food odorant (intermediary)

Dunkel et al. 2014

Identified in the meta-analysis of 227 food samples as one of 57 intermediary odorants — appears in 5–25% of foods.

Source: Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 7124–7143

Properties

Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 10.0 ppb 1 published value · see all 6 with sources
CAS number: 138-86-3

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.

Published thresholds

6 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

10.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
10.0 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

34.0 ppb – 200 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
34.0 ppb	water (food: orange juice (reconstituted from concentrate))	Literature corpus	35496034
200 ppb	water (food: hand-squeezed grapefruit juice)	Literature corpus	35496034

In air

0.700 ppb – 38.0 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.700 ppb	air (food: dill seed)	Literature corpus	35496034
10.0 ppb	air (food: reference standard (air))	Literature corpus	35496034
38.0 ppb	air	Nagata 2003	—

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.

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain alpha-limonene. 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 alpha-limonene in it.

164 cmpds

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