tridecanoic acid
sour acidFound in 36 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.
Look up another compound — search by name, CAS number, PubChem CID, or FEMA #.
- Formula
- C13H26O2
- Molecular weight
- 214.34 g/mol
- PubChem CID
- 12530 — full record on PubChem
Properties
- Odor description
- waxy woody
- Odor threshold — in water, medium unconfirmed
- 10000 ppb 1 published value · see all 1 with sources
- Volatility
- medium
- CAS number
- 638-53-9
- Retention index
- 1682
FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use
- FEMA number
- 4336
- GRAS publication
- GRAS 23
- FEMA primary name
- Tridecanoic acid
Use-level matrix not extracted for this substance — check the source publication for current ppm guidance.
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.
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.
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
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
10000 ppbReported as water, but the medium could not be confirmed from the source — not used for OAV.
| Threshold | Matrix | Source | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10000 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.
Where you'd actually smell it
Odor Activity Value = measured concentration ÷ odor threshold (10000.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 1 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.
| Food | Concentration (ppb) | OAV | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| olive | 400000.0 | 40.0 ⚡ | DOI |
| mead | 100.0 | 0.01 | — |
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 | 9582 ppb | 9.58e+03–9.58e+03 | 1 | 1 | one paper |
| water | 1e+04 ppb | 1e+04–1e+04 | 1 | 1 | one paper |
Found in
Measured impact first, then profile shareEvery ingredient known to contain tridecanoic 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 tridecanoic acid in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.
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