ethyl decanoate
fruity ester Key food odorantFound in 61 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.
Look up another compound — search by name, CAS number, PubChem CID, or FEMA #.
- Formula
- C12H24O2
- Molecular weight
- 200.32 g/mol
- PubChem CID
- 8048 — full record on PubChem
Key food odorant (individualist)
Dunkel et al. 2014Identified 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.
Properties
- Odor description
- grape, waxy
- Odor threshold — in a food matrix
- 0.960 ppb – 292 ppb median 7.9 ppb · 12 published values · see all 12 with sources
- Volatility
- medium
- CAS number
- 110-38-3
- Retention index
- 1598
FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use
- FEMA number
- 2432
- GRAS publication
- GRAS 3
- FEMA primary name
- ETHYL DECANOATE
Use-level matrix not extracted for this substance — check the source publication for current ppm guidance.
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.
Same molecule, unified here — previously counted and displayed as separate compounds.
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.
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
12 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.
In a food matrix
0.960 ppb – 292 ppbMeasured in a real food, where the matrix shifts detection — not a clean-water value.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.028 ppb | water (food: beer) | Literature corpus | 17499755, 33889833 |
| Flagged: 280× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden. | |||
| 0.960 ppb | water (food: wine) | Literature corpus | 25939071, 32657431 |
| 1.4 ppb | water (food: apple) | Literature corpus | 11302210 |
| 2.5 ppb | water (food: tea) | Literature corpus | 31861730, 37188725, 41551788 |
| 4.2 ppb SIDA | water (food: grape) | Literature corpus | 30779560, 11302210, 15826061 +22 |
| 7.9 ppb | water (food: cheese) | Literature corpus | 40335862 |
| 8.0 ppb | water (food: rice) | Literature corpus | 26973621, 38846797, 40467248 +1 |
| 16.4 ppb SIDA | water (food: baijiu) | Literature corpus | 30779560, 11302210, 15826061 +22 |
| 41.6 ppb | water (food: lime) | Literature corpus | 15826061, 41048468 |
| 44.0 ppb | water (food: unknown) | Literature corpus | 22291900, 25717332, 29419737 +3 |
| 292 ppb | water (food: fish) | Literature corpus | 36950329 |
| 1634 ppb SIDA | water (food: bread) | Literature corpus | 30779560, 29579975, 41613919 |
| Flagged: 206× from the median of this group. Excluded from the range above pending re-check against the source publication — shown rather than hidden. | |||
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 (7.9375 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 12 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.
| Food | Concentration (ppb) | OAV | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| green tea | 110000.0 | 13858 ⚡ | PMID 35495905 |
| seaweed | 86500.0 | 10898 ⚡ | PMID 36969824 |
| wine | 79583.0 | 10026 ⚡ | PMID 30704594 |
| grape | 61900.0 | 7798 ⚡ | PMID 34623142 |
| black tea | 50000.0 | 6299 ⚡ | PMID 37780253 |
| beer | 1500.0 | 189 ⚡ | PMID 37185768 |
| baijiu | 1381.0 | 174 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| lime | 843.0 | 106 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| sausage | 221.0 | 27.8 ⚡ | DOI |
| mace | 200.0 | 25.2 ⚡ | PMID 38001348 |
| rice | 200.0 | 25.2 ⚡ | Corpus paper |
| fish | 54.6 | 6.88 | Corpus paper |
| cheese | 6.9 | 0.87 | Corpus paper |
| tea | 2.0 | 0.25 | Corpus paper |
| bread | 2.0 | 0.25 | — |
| apple | 1.6 | 0.20 | — |
Concentrations from PubMed Central Open Access papers (free literature corpus, MIT-style licensed). Copper = OAV ≥ 10 (strongly perceptible). Green = OAV ≥ 1 (perceptible).
Found in
Measured impact first, then profile shareEvery ingredient known to contain ethyl decanoate. 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 ethyl decanoate in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.
The inverted compound index is a Pro feature — reverse-search any of 5,240 flavor molecules across the full graph.
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 ethyl decanoate, or compare two ingredients side-by-side.