hexenal
green aldehydeFound in 3 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.
Look up another compound — search by name, CAS number, PubChem CID, or FEMA #.
Properties
- Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water
- 0.250 ppb 1 published value · see all 1 with sources
- CAS number
- 1335-39-3
- Retention index
- 846
FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use
- FEMA number
- 4194
- GRAS publication
- GRAS 22
- FEMA primary name
- (+/-)-2-Phenyl-4-methyl-2-hexenal
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 | 2 | 15 |
| breakfast cereal | 1 | 7 |
| confectionery frostings | 2 | 12 |
| frozen dairy | 1 | 8 |
| gelatins/ puddings | 0.5 | 5 |
| imitation dairy | 0.5 | 7.5 |
| instant coffee/tea | 2 | 12 |
| milk products | 0.5 | 5 |
| soft candy | 1 | 15 |
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.
Orthonasal, in clean water
0.250 ppbThe reference measurement — smelled in water. OAV is computed against this.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.250 ppb | water_odor | Leffingwell | — |
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 (0.25 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 1 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.
| Food | Concentration (ppb) | OAV | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| strawberry | 44000.0 | 176000 ⚡ | — |
| orange | 768.0 | 3072 ⚡ | — |
| chocolate | 0.1 | 0.40 | — |
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 | 3000 ppb | 17–8e+03 | 3 | 2 | no (2.7 decades) |
Found in
Measured impact first, then profile shareEvery ingredient known to contain hexenal. 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 hexenal in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.
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 hexenal, or compare two ingredients side-by-side.