pentanoic acid ethyl ester

fruity ester Key food odorant

Found in 1 ingredient 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.

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

Properties

Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 3.2 ppb 2 published values · see all 8 with sources
CAS number: 539-82-2

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.

Published thresholds

8 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

3.2 ppb

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

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

Retronasal / in-mouth

94.0 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
94.0 ppb	water_flavor	Leffingwell	—

In air

0.110 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.110 ppb	air	Nagata 2003	—

Other matrix

3.0 ppb – 4.9 ppb

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

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
3.0 ppb	ethanol/water (food: rum / red wine)	Literature corpus	25857434, 38846797, 40467248
3.0 ppb	ethanol/water 40/60 (food: rum (aged))	Literature corpus	25857434, 38846797, 40467248
3.0 ppb	ethanol/water 40/60 (food: rum (young))	Literature corpus	25857434, 38846797, 40467248
4.9 ppb	wine matrix (12% ethanol) (food: rum / red wine)	Literature corpus	25857434, 38846797, 40467248

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	15.46 µg/L air	0.11–26.8	7	5	no (2.4 decades)
ethanol solution	26.9 ppb	26.8–73.3	8	7	yes
food matrix	3.79 ppb	0.11–2e+04	14	14	no (2.4 decades)
unstated	26.78 ppb	0.005–580	53	44	yes
water	34.4 ppb	0.094–580	17	8	yes

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain pentanoic acid ethyl ester. 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 pentanoic acid ethyl ester in it.

strawberry

berry

479 cmpds

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