phenyl acetate

fruity ester

Found in 6 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

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

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C8H8O2
Molecular weight: 136.15 g/mol
PubChem CID: 31229 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: floral, sweet, rose, honey
Odor threshold: 1215.5 ppb
Volatility: high
CAS number: 122-79-2

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 3958
GRAS publication: GRAS 19
FEMA primary name: PHENYL ACETATE

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

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33.

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.

Also filed as

phenylacetate

Same molecule, unified here — previously counted and displayed as separate compounds.

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.

floral, sweet, creamy, roasted, clove FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

chemical FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 2 sources agree

floral, rose FlavorDB 2.0

chemical, floral, sweet, creamy, roasted, clove FlavorDB 2.0

floral, sweet, rose, honey shown above Llm Adjudicated

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floral Flavordb Odor Column

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

Where you'd actually smell it

Odor Activity Value = measured concentration ÷ odor threshold (1215.5 ppb). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
rice	3.1	0.00	—

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?
food matrix	250 ppb	250–250	3	2	yes
unstated	225 ppb	3.4–250	4	4	yes

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

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

76 cmpds

201 cmpds

407 cmpds

421 cmpds