hexanoic acid ethyl ester

fruity ester Key food odorant

Found in 8 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. Characteristic odor: fruity, pineapple.

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

Properties

Odor description: fruity
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 0.750 ppb – 30.0 ppb median 1.0 ppb · 3 published values · see all 14 with sources
CAS number: 123-66-0
Retention index: 1242

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.

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

hexanoic acid, ethyl ester

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

Published thresholds

14 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

0.750 ppb – 30.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.750 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 4 studies	—
1.0 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—
30.0 ppb SIDA	water/ethanol 6:4 (food: american bourbon whisky)	Literature corpus	18570373, 15826061, 17499755 +25

In a food matrix

0.870 ppb – 5.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.870 ppb SIDA	water (food: goat milk)	Literature corpus	18570373, 15826061, 17499755 +25
5.0 ppb SIDA	water (food: hand-squeezed grapefruit juice)	Literature corpus	18570373, 15826061, 17499755 +25

Retronasal / in-mouth

0.500 ppb – 20.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.500 ppb SIDA	water_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
20.0 ppb SIDA	oil_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

Other matrix

4.9 ppb – 100 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
4.9 ppb SIDA	wine matrix (12% ethanol) (food: rum / red wine)	Literature corpus	18570373, 15826061, 17499755 +25
29.7 ppb SIDA	ethanol/water 40/60 (food: rum (aged))	Literature corpus	18570373, 15826061, 17499755 +25
29.7 ppb SIDA	ethanol/water 40/60 (food: rum (young))	Literature corpus	18570373, 15826061, 17499755 +25
30.0 ppb SIDA	ethanol/water (food: rum / red wine)	Literature corpus	18570373, 15826061, 17499755 +25
40.0 ppb SIDA	oil_orthonasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
40.0 ppb SIDA	oil (sunflower oil) (food: gouda cheese)	Literature corpus	18570373, 15826061, 17499755 +25
100 ppb SIDA	wine (food: red wine (cabernet sauvignon))	Literature corpus	18570373, 15826061, 17499755 +25

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.

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	9.39 µg/L air	0.2–80	16	12	yes
ethanol solution	55.15 ppb	1.2–580	24	22	yes
food matrix	14 ppb	0.3–5.5e+04	85	80	no (2.2 decades)
model wine or beer	14 ppb	14–200	6	6	yes
not applicable	14 ppb	14–14	1	1	one paper
oil	40 ppb	40–40	2	1	one paper
unstated	14 ppb	0.0012–8e+04	199	173	yes
water	2.2 ppb	0.0005–200	50	46	yes

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain hexanoic acid ethyl ester. 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 hexanoic acid ethyl ester in it.

134 cmpds

210 cmpds

257 cmpds

301 cmpds