methylamine

roasted nitrogen compound

Found in 42 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: CH5N
Molecular weight: 31.057 g/mol
PubChem CID: 6329 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor threshold — in air: 35.0 ppb 1 published value · see all 1 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 74-89-5

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

? Partial match

FEMA number: 4245
GRAS publication: GRAS 22
FEMA primary name: Trimethylamine oxide

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	10
breakfast cereal	0.2	1
cheese	0.4	2
condiments/ relishes	0.1	0.5
confectionery frostings	1	5
fats/oils	0.1	0.5
fish products	0.2	1
frozen dairy	0.4	2
fruit ices	0.4	2
gravies	0.1	0.5
meat products	0.2	1
milk products	0.4	2
other grains	0.2	1
poultry	0.2	1
processed fruits	0.4	2
seasonings/ flavors	0.1	0.5
snack foods	1	5
soups	0.1	0.5

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. 1 related FEMA record 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

35.0 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
35.0 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 (150000.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 1 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
red wine	1280.0	0.01	—

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?
air	4.76e+04 µg/L air	14.9–4.76e+04	4	2	no (3.5 decades)

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

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

169 cmpds

172 cmpds

174 cmpds

176 cmpds