hexane

Found in 5 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

Properties

Odor description: alkane
Odor threshold — in air: 1500 ppb 1 published value · see all 1 with sources
CAS number: 110-54-3
Retention index: 618

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

? Partial match

FEMA number: 4782
GRAS publication: GRAS 27
CAS number: 1679-06-7
FEMA primary name: 2(3)-Hexanethiol

Reported use levels (ppm by food category)

Typical vs maximum reported addition levels in finished food. Use as a regulatory ceiling reference — verify against the current GRAS publication for your product category.

Food category	Typical (ppm)	Maximum (ppm)
baked goods	0.02	0.06
beverages, alcoholic	0.005	0.03
beverages, non-alcoholic	0.005	0.03
breakfast cereals	0.01	0.04
chewing gum	0.02	0.06
condiments and relishes	0.02	0.06
confections and frostings	0.02	0.06
egg products	0.015	0.05
frozen dairy	0.02	0.06
fruit ices	0.01	0.04
gelatins and puddings	0.015	0.04
gravies	0.02	0.06
hard candy	0.02	0.05
instant coffee and tea	0.02	0.06
jams and jellies	0.02	0.06
meat products	0.02	0.08
milk products	0.005	0.04
nut products	0.01	0.04
other grains	0.01	0.06
processed fruits	0.01	0.05
seasonings and flavors	0.01	0.1
snack foods	0.01	0.06
soft candy	0.01	0.04
soups	0.02	0.06
sweet sauces	0.02	0.06

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. 30 related FEMA records for this name — verify the exact substance for regulatory use.

Published thresholds

1 measured value 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 air

1500 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
1500 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.

Where you'd actually smell it

Odor Activity Value = measured concentration ÷ odor threshold (34000.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 1 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
beef	56.0	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?
unstated	580 ppb	6.4–1.5e+03	3	3	no (2.4 decades)

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain hexane. 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 hexane in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

106 cmpds

290 cmpds

434 cmpds

438 cmpds