n-decanoic acid

fruity acid Key food odorant

Found in 7 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: fatty, soapy.

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

Properties

Odor description: acides aroma
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 10000 ppb 2 published values · see all 9 with sources
CAS number: 334-48-5
Retention index: 1355

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.

Descriptions on file

Ordered by how many independent descriptor streams give each wording, then by how often it appears. The bar is still replication — one source copied onto many ingredients scores high there — so the two can disagree.

acides aroma shown above FlavorDB 2.0

fruity FlavorDB 2.0

Bars are the share of ingredient records carrying each description. High agreement means the sources replicate each other — not necessarily that they are right.

Published thresholds

9 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

10000 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
10000 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—
10000 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

In a food matrix

6.0 ppb – 2200 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
6.0 ppb SIDA	water (food: longjing green tea infusion)	Literature corpus	32625638, 15826061, 17898464 +26
2200 ppb SIDA	water (food: litsea pungens fruit)	Literature corpus	32625638, 15826061, 17898464 +26

Retronasal / in-mouth

2000 ppb – 3500 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
2000 ppb SIDA	water_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 2 studies	—
3500 ppb	water_flavor	Leffingwell	—

Other matrix

2800 ppb – 15000 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
2800 ppb SIDA	ethanol/water (food: rum / red wine)	Literature corpus	32625638, 15826061, 17898464 +26
2800 ppb SIDA	ethanol/water 40/60 (food: rum (aged))	Literature corpus	32625638, 15826061, 17898464 +26
15000 ppb SIDA	wine matrix (12% ethanol) (food: rum / red wine)	Literature corpus	32625638, 15826061, 17898464 +26

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	4380 µg/L air	10–1.5e+04	8	6	no (3.1 decades)
ethanol solution	1.017e+04 ppb	1e+03–3.13e+04	10	9	yes
food matrix	1400 ppb	6–1.37e+07	49	43	no (2.1 decades)
model wine or beer	3500 ppb	1e+03–1.5e+04	4	4	yes
not applicable	1000 ppb	1e+03–1e+03	1	1	one paper
oil	2.3e+05 ppb	2.3e+05–2.3e+05	1	1	one paper
unstated	1000 ppb	1–1e+06	104	93	no (2.1 decades)
water	1900 ppb	0.05–1e+05	24	21	no (3.5 decades)

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain n-decanoic acid. 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-decanoic acid in it.

36 cmpds

129 cmpds

198 cmpds

320 cmpds