n-butanol

floral alcohol Key food odorant

Found in 3 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

Key food odorant (individualist)

Dunkel et al. 2014

Identified in the meta-analysis of 227 food samples as one of 151 individualist odorants — appears in <5% of foods, carries the diagnostic signature of specific ingredients. Characteristic odor: alcoholic.

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

Properties

Odor description: medicine, fruit
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 500 ppb – 890 ppb median 695 ppb · 2 published values · see all 10 with sources
CAS number: 71-36-3

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: None
GRAS publication: GRAS 1
FEMA primary name: n-Butanol

Use-level matrix not extracted for this substance — check the source publication for current ppm guidance.

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33.

Published thresholds

10 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

500 ppb – 890 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
500 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—
890 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies	—

In a food matrix

500 ppb – 590 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
500 ppb	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	—
590 ppb	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	—

Retronasal / in-mouth

500 ppb – 200000 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
500 ppb SIDA	water_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—
200000 ppb SIDA	beer_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

In air

0.668 ppb – 302 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.668 ppb	air (food: reference standard (air))	Literature corpus	—
7.9 ppb	air (C2_cometto_muniz_abraham)	Cometto-Muñiz (PMC)	—
38.0 ppb	air	Nagata 2003	—
302 ppb	air (HS_hellman_small)	Cometto-Muñiz (PMC)	—

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	1441 µg/L air	0.48–9.9e+05	12	9	no (6.0 decades)
ethanol solution	2733 ppb	459–8.2e+05	11	11	no (2.5 decades)
food matrix	5000 ppb	0.5–1.5e+08	45	39	no (2.8 decades)
model wine or beer	1.5e+05 ppb	1.5e+05–1.5e+05	1	1	one paper
oil	38 ppb	38–3.11e+03	3	3	yes
unstated	2730 ppb	2.3–9.56e+06	107	90	no (2.5 decades)
water	459.2 ppb	3.8–5e+05	21	20	yes

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain n-butanol. 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 n-butanol in it.

320 cmpds

364 cmpds

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