phenylacetonitrile

roasted nitrogen compound

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: C8H7N
Molecular weight: 117.15 g/mol
PubChem CID: 8794 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor threshold: 1200.0 ppb
Volatility: high
CAS number: 140-29-4
Retention index: 1145

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.

Where you'd actually smell it

Odor Activity Value = measured concentration ÷ odor threshold (1200.0 ppb). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
bread	1140.0	0.95	Corpus paper
honey	117.0	0.10	Corpus paper

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?
unstated	13.46 ppb	0.724–1e+03	11	7	no (3.0 decades)
water	1000 ppb	1–1.2e+03	5	5	no (3.1 decades)

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

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

364 cmpds

✓1 11 cmpds

75 cmpds

202 cmpds