A colorless liquid compound found in citrus oils that smells lemony and is used in fragrances, flavorings, and vitamin A synthesis.
From citric or citrus, with the suffix -al denoting an aldehyde functional group. First isolated from lemon oil in the late 1800s as chemists began analyzing essential oils.
Citral is the reason lemon oil smells like lemon—it's one of nature's most versatile molecules that chemists learned to make synthetically, so we can have lemon scent without needing thousands of real lemons. Your nose literally detects this single molecule in the air.
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