Sesame Seeds: Flavor, History, Uses, Nutrition and Allergen Rules

Raw sesame seeds taste mild. Toast them and they turn deeply nutty, with a different set of aroma compounds depending on how hot the pan gets. They’re the small, flat, oil-rich seeds of Sesamum indicum, one of the oldest oilseeds people have grown, and the Middle East grinds them into tahini while East Asian cooking presses them into a dark toasted oil. Sesame is also one of the nine major food allergens in the United States, and in 2020 contaminated sesame from India set off recalls across the EU.

At a glance

What sesame is

Sesame is an annual of the seasonally dry tropics. Seed color depends on the cultivar: white, gray, yellow-white, brown or black. The black comes from a melanin-like pigment in the seed coat, and flavonoid content goes up as the coat gets darker.⁶ See black sesame seeds and black vs. white sesame seeds.

You can buy sesame hulled or unhulled, and hulling changes more than the color. USDA’s figures for toasted sesame show 989 mg of calcium per 100 g in whole seed but 131 mg in hulled kernels.⁷⁸ See hulled vs. unhulled sesame seeds.

Flavor and aroma

Raw sesame tastes mild, sweet and nutty, and toasting deepens it a lot. The flavor of toasted sesame and dark sesame oil comes from a big set of compounds that only form during toasting. Katzer reports research finding that pyrazines dominate the flavor under mild toasting (160°C), while toasting at 200°C produces more furans.⁴ PROSEA notes a slight bitterness in sesame that comes from phytic and oxalic acids binding with calcium.²

Black seed has a stronger, slightly more bitter taste than white.

Origin and history

Sesame is old. PROSEA calls it probably the most ancient oilseed people have used, with its domestication “lost in the mists of antiquity.”² Where it started isn’t settled:

Here’s the archaeological and written record in these sources:

• Indus Valley. Sesame from excavations at Harappa, in present-day Pakistan, has been dated to 2000 BCE,² and Katzer notes sesame has been grown in India since the Harappan period.⁴
• Mesopotamia. PROSEA describes sesame as an important Mesopotamian crop by about 2100-2000 BCE, and the region as the main center from which domesticated sesame spread.
• Egypt. The Egyptian medical papyrus of Thebes, about 1500 BCE, lists remedies that include sesame oil and seed.
• China. By the 6th century BCE, sesame was so prominent in China that it was used as currency.²

The name. English “sesame” comes through Latin and Greek, which borrowed the word very early via Phoenician from Late Babylonian. The Assyrian form is glossed as “oil-seed.” “Open sesame” first shows up in English as a magic charm in 1722.⁹

The American South. “Benne,” the name still used in the Carolina Lowcountry, is one of several West African names for the plant. The Charleston County Public Library’s history says benne came to the region with enslaved people brought from West Africa. The earliest record it cites dates to 1730.¹⁰

Several claims get repeated a lot that we couldn’t trace: an Assyrian myth in which the gods drank sesame wine before creating the earth, Chinese use of sesame oil as lamp fuel 5,000 years ago, an Egyptian word sesemt, and sesame as one of the leading crops of the 18th-century South.

Production

PROSEA puts world production at 2.7 million tonnes in 2000, after only gradual growth since the 1970s.² In the same account, India’s output held steady at about 500,000 tonnes, China’s reached about 700,000 tonnes and Myanmar’s about 300,000, and Sudan often made up half of world exports. Japan, Italy and China were major import markets. These figures are from around 2000. We couldn’t open a current statistical source (FAOSTAT).

How sesame seeds are used

• Middle East. Ground into tahini, a paste that thickens and flavors sauces. Sesame also goes into the Jordanian za’atar mixture. See za’atar and dukkah.
• Japan and Korea. Toasted sesame gets sprinkled over Japanese and Korean dishes. Gomashio is toasted sesame mixed with about 10% salt, usually sprinkled over rice.⁴ See gomasio, furikake and shichimi togarashi.
• China. Chinese sesame paste (zhi ma jiang) is made from toasted seed, tastes very strong, and goes mainly into salad dressings and sauces for cold appetizers.
• Mexico. Sesame is common in Mexican cooking and shows up, with almonds, in one of the country’s most famous dishes, mole.
• Breads and sweets. PROSEA lists sesame as a major ingredient in sweets and a garnish for breads and pastries. The sesame-topped hamburger bun is the obvious American example; see also everything bagel seasoning.

Sesame oil

Refined sesame oil is bland and common in Europe and the US. Cold-pressed oil is sold in health shops. And the dark, toasted oil of East Asia gets its flavor from toasting. Katzer says dark sesame oil isn’t suitable for frying unless you dilute it with a bland oil.⁴ Sesame oil holds up well against oxidation, which PROSEA credits to its lignans.²

Toasting at home

Toast seeds in a dry pan over medium heat, shaking often, until they’re golden and fragrant, then tip them out of the pan right away. Toasting temperature changes which aroma compounds take over, as the research above shows, but exact timing is a judgment call, so go by color and smell.

Nutrition

USDA lists whole dried sesame at 573 kcal, 17.7 g protein and 49.7 g fat per 100 g.³ Per tablespoon (9 g), worked out from USDA’s values and FDA Daily Values:³¹¹

These are for whole seed of unstated color. Hulled seed has far less calcium (see above).

On heart health, a 2016 systematic review and meta-analysis of ten controlled trials found that sesame lowered blood triglycerides, an effect seen with sesame oil, not seeds, and didn’t significantly change total cholesterol. The authors noted the trials’ limitations.¹² We don’t claim sesame seeds prevent or treat any disease.

Safety

Allergy

Sesame became the ninth major food allergen in the United States under the FASTER Act, effective 1 January 2023, so packaged foods have to declare it.⁵ The FDA has reported that some manufacturers responded by deliberately adding sesame to products that didn’t use to contain it, and advises checking the label every time you buy a product.¹³

The 2020 ethylene oxide recalls

In September 2020 Belgium notified the EU’s rapid alert system (RASFF) of sesame seeds from India with high levels of ethylene oxide. The European Commission recorded “severe exceedances” of the EU maximum residue level of 0.05 mg/kg, set at the limit of quantification, with affected products distributed to 24 member states and 9 other countries. Affected seed and products made from it had to be withdrawn or recalled, and the Commission planned to require pre-export testing by India and to check 50% of consignments at the EU border.¹⁴

Buying and storage

Look for seeds that are even in color and smell clean and nutty, not bitter or paint-like. PROSEA notes that seed with less than 8% moisture can keep for up to two years in airtight containers,² but that’s for dried seed in storage, not an opened jar in your kitchen. Toasted seeds and tahini lose their aroma faster, though we found no published figure.

Substitutes and comparisons

See sesame seed substitutes for options ranked by job, and the black sesame seeds and poppy seeds profiles.