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hexenal

green aldehyde

Found 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
Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

? Partial match
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
Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. 12 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.

Orthonasal, in clean water

0.250 ppb

The 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.

MediumMedianRangeValuesPapersPapers agree?
unstated 3000 ppb 17–8e+03 32 no (2.7 decades)

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every 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.

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Try the pairing tools to see which ingredient combinations rely on hexenal, or compare two ingredients side-by-side.