pentanone

fruity ketone

Found in 2 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

Ambiguous name

“pentanone” does not identify one molecule. May be 2-pentanone or 3-pentanone. The alias map had been asserting 3-pentanone.

We assign no CAS number, structure or odour threshold to this entry. Guessing one would make the record look more certain than the evidence is.

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

Properties

Odor description: ether
Odor threshold — in water, medium unconfirmed: 2.0 ppb 1 published value · see all 1 with sources
CAS number: 96-22-0

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

? Partial match

FEMA number: 4182
GRAS publication: GRAS 22
FEMA primary name: 4-(Methylthio)-2-pentanone

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	0.8	1
beverages (nonalcoholic)	0.5	0.6
frozen dairy	0.5	0.7
gelatins/ puddings	0.5	1
meat products	0.2	0.5

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33. 16 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.

In water, medium unconfirmed

2.0 ppb

Reported as water, but the medium could not be confirmed from the source — not used for OAV.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
2.0 ppb	water (unverified; relabelled from air, audit 2026-10-14)	PMC open access	—

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	4990 µg/L air	28–7e+04	5	2	no (3.4 decades)
food matrix	800 ppb	0.3–7e+04	19	18	no (4.5 decades)
oil	350 ppb	350–350	1	1	one paper
unstated	2090 ppb	1.38–1.94e+05	16	15	no (5.0 decades)
water	2150 ppb	1.38e+03–7.5e+04	7	6	yes

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain pentanone. 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 pentanone in it.

206 cmpds

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