Sesamum indicum (syn. Sesamum orientale); wild progenitor Sesamum mulayanum
Origin: Indian subcontinent: the Harappan civilisation of the Indus Valley and peninsular India (modern Pakistan and India)
Sesame was domesticated on the Indian subcontinent from the wild progenitor Sesamum mulayanum, a species of peninsular India to which cultivated sesame (Sesamum indicum) is most closely related in form and chromosomes. Charred sesame seeds recovered from the Harappan city of Harappa, in a stratum dated to roughly 3500 BCE, are amongst the earliest cultivated sesame anywhere, and the crop was firmly established across the Indus Valley by the third millennium BCE. Although the great majority of wild Sesamum species grow in sub-Saharan Africa, the botanical and archaeological evidence assembled by Dorothea Bedigian places the domestication of the cultivated plant squarely in India, from which it then travelled west and east. Sesame is, by most reckonings, the world's first cultivated oilseed: a plant prized not for a grain or a fruit but for the oil pressed from its tiny seeds. The seed coat varies in colour, from the pale ivory and gold of the hulled Middle Eastern seed to the brown of the natural seed and the black sesame revered across East Asia, but these are colour cultivars of a single species, not separate plants.
From the Indus Valley sesame moved west along the trade routes of the Bronze Age into Mesopotamia, where it became the great oilseed of Sumer and Babylon: the Greek historian Herodotus recorded that sesame was the only oil used in Babylonia. It passed into pharaonic Egypt, the Levant, and classical Greece, where the seed was pounded with honey into the soldier's ration that survives as pasteli. Eastward, sesame travelled the Silk Road into Han China, where its foreign provenance is recorded in its old name húmá ('Hu hemp'), and onward into Korea and Japan, which made the toasted seed and its fragrant oil a cornerstone of their cooking and gave black sesame a culinary world of its own. Carried south up the Nile and across the Sahel, sesame became benniseed, a staple of West Africa, and from there enslaved West Africans brought it across the Atlantic as benne, into the Gullah Lowcountry of the American South and the confectionery of the Caribbean. Spanish ships carried it to Mexico as ajonjolí, where it became inseparable from mole, whilst the Arab and Ottoman worlds raised the ground seed to its highest refinement as tahini and halva.
Sesame is the great connective seed of world cooking, present on three continents as a true staple rather than a garnish. In the Middle East it is ground into tahini, the seed butter at the heart of hummus, baba ganoush, and the za'atar of every Levantine breakfast, and boiled with sugar into halva. Across East Asia its toasted oil seasons more dishes than any other single fat, whilst black sesame fills the dumplings, ices, and sweets of China, Korea, and Japan. In India it gives gingelly oil and the til sweets of the winter solstice; in West Africa it is benniseed soup and porridge; in the American South it is the benne wafer of Charleston. It crowns the world's breads, from the Turkish simit and the bagel to the burger bun. Sudan, Myanmar, India, Tanzania, and Nigeria lead its modern cultivation, and global demand for tahini and sesame oil has carried the seed far beyond any of its historic homes.
Historical Journey of Sesame
Harappa, Indus Valley (modern Pakistan) — c. 3500 BCE
Sesame is domesticated on the Indian subcontinent from the wild Sesamum mulayanum, and charred seeds at the Harappan city of Harappa, dated to roughly 3500 BCE, place it amongst the earliest cultivated oilseeds in the world. The farmers of the Indus grow it for the oil pressed from its seeds, a fat that keeps far better in heat than animal fat, and across the Punjab and the Indus plain the toasted seed is bound with sugar and jaggery into the winter sweets reori and gajak, still made from Lahore to Multan at Lohri and Basant. From this north-western cradle sesame spreads south into peninsular India and west into Mesopotamia, beginning the journeys that will carry it across the world.
- Reori (Punjabi toasted sesame and sugar nuggets)
Babylon, Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) — c. 2400 BCE
Sesame reaches Mesopotamia through the sea trade with the Indus (the land the Sumerians called Meluhha) and becomes the great oilseed of Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon. Cuneiform tablets record the seed as šamaššammu and its pressed oil, the finest grade called ellu, used for cooking, for anointing, for medicine, and burned in the lamps of the temples; Herodotus, writing much later, reports that sesame was the only oil the Babylonians used. The seed is also pounded into the earliest sesame confections, pressed with dried figs and date syrup into dense, keeping cakes, the distant ancestors of every halva to come.
- Mesopotamian fig and sesame cake
Thebes, Egypt — c. 1500 BCE
Sesame is established along the Nile, where it is grown for oil and for the seed itself, depicted in tomb paintings amongst the offerings of the harvest and prescribed in the medical papyri. The Egyptian kitchen toasts and grinds it into the spice-and-nut blends that survive as dukkah, and dresses raw vegetables in pounded sesame paste loosened with lemon, the technique behind the tahini sauces of the modern Egyptian table. From Egypt sesame moves outward in three directions: west along the North African coast, south up the Nile towards the Sahel, and across the eastern Mediterranean into Greece.
- Dukkah (Egyptian sesame, hazelnut, and spice blend)
- Fugl salat (Egyptian radish with tahini, lemon, and herbs)
The Deccan and Tamil South, Peninsular India — c. 1000 BCE
Carried south from the Indus into the peninsula, sesame becomes one of the oldest and most cherished seeds of Indian cooking, known across the languages as til (from the Sanskrit tila) and, for its oil, as gingelly. In Maharashtra and the western Deccan the toasted seed is bound with jaggery into tilgul, the sweet exchanged at the winter-solstice festival of Makar Sankranti with the words til-gul ghya, god god bola (take this sesame and jaggery, and speak sweetly); in the Tamil south, cold-pressed gingelly oil (nallennai) is the defining cooking fat, carrying the tempered rice ellu sadam and the tamarind kuzhambu, whilst dry sesame chutneys are pounded across the Deccan to eat with millet bhakri. India remains, with its neighbours, amongst the largest growers of the seed in the world.
- Tilgul Laddu (Maharashtrian sesame and jaggery sweets for Makar Sankranti)
- Ellu Sadam (Tamil sesame rice with gingelly oil)
- Poondu kuzhambu (Tamil garlic and tamarind kuzhambu in gingelly oil)
- Jowar bhakri (with toasted sesame garlic chutney)
Athens, Greece — c. 400 BCE
Sesame is well known to the classical Greeks, who call the seed sēsamon and pound it with honey into sēsamis, the pressed sesame-and-honey sweet that survives almost unchanged as the pasteli of modern Greece. Such cakes are eaten at weddings as emblems of fertility, given to soldiers and athletes as concentrated, keeping nourishment, and sold in the markets of Athens; comic poets and physicians alike mention the seed. The Greek love of the sesame-and-honey bar passes into the wider Mediterranean and Near East, where it meets the older Mesopotamian confections and, centuries later, the Arab art of halva.
- Pasteli (Greek sesame and honey bars)
Chang'an, Han China — c. 100 BCE
Sesame travels the Silk Road into Han China, where its foreign provenance is recorded forever in its old name 胡麻 (húmá), 'Hu hemp', the Hu being the peoples of the western regions through whom it came; tradition credits its introduction to the envoy Zhang Qian. The Chinese make the toasted seed and its dark, intensely fragrant oil central to their cooking, drizzled at the last moment over noodles, congee, and stir-fries for aroma rather than heat, and ground into the sesame paste that gives the dan dan noodle and the smashed-cucumber salad their depth. Black sesame becomes a prized ingredient in its own right, ground into sweet fillings and tonics, and the seed is wrapped, fried, and rolled into the dim sum classics of the south.
- Hei zhima tangyuan (black sesame glutinous rice balls)
- Jian dui (deep-fried sesame balls)
- Dan dan mian (Sichuan sesame and chilli noodles)
- Pai huang gua (smashed cucumber with sesame dressing)
Khartoum and the Middle Nile, Sudan — c. 350 CE
Sesame travels south from Egypt up the Nile into Nubia, grown in the kingdoms of Kush and Meroë, and the Middle Nile becomes one of the great sesame lands of the world; Sudan is, to this day, amongst its largest producers. Sesame oil (sayt al-simsim) is the everyday cooking fat of the Sudanese kitchen, the seed is boiled into halawa, and tahini, thinned with lime and often blended with groundnut, becomes the salata tahniyya set beside ful and bread at almost every meal. From the Nile, sesame is carried west along the Sahel into the kingdoms of West Africa.
- Salata tahniyya (Sudanese tahini and groundnut salad)
Seoul, Korea — c. 600 CE
Sesame becomes one of the defining flavours of the Korean kitchen, where toasted sesame oil (chamgireum) and toasted, lightly crushed sesame seeds (kkae) season almost every banchan, marinade, and rice dish. The seed perfumes bulgogi and the dipping sauces of the grill table, finishes namul and kimchi, and is boiled into the restorative black sesame porridge kkaejuk. Korea also turns the seed into confectionery, frying and binding it with grain syrup into the brittle, lacquered sweets of the gangjeong family eaten at the New Year.
- Kkae gangjeong (Korean sesame seed brittle)
- Bulgogi (marinated with sesame oil and seeds)
Kyoto, Japan — c. 800 CE
Sesame, known in Japan as goma, becomes essential to both the everyday and the temple kitchen. Toasted and ground in the ridged earthenware suribachi, white and black sesame become the dressing goma-ae, the seasoning that scatters over rice and salads, and the rich sesame 'tofu' goma-dofu of Buddhist shojin cuisine, where the monks of Mount Koya set ground sesame with kudzu starch into a silken, eggless block. Black sesame (kurogoma) flavours the sweets, ices, and broths of the modern Japanese table, and the country embraces the Sichuan sesame-noodle tradition as its own creamy tantanmen.
- Goma-dofu (Mount Koya sesame and kudzu 'tofu')
- Ingen no goma-ae (runner beans in toasted sesame dressing)
- Tantanmen (Japanese sesame and chilli noodle soup)
Isfahan, Persia (Iran) — c. 900 CE
In the Persian kitchen the ground seed becomes ardeh, the Persian tahini, and one of the country's most enduring breakfasts is born: ardeh-o-shireh, sesame paste swirled with grape or date syrup and scooped up with warm barbari bread. Persia boils ardeh with sugar into halva ardeh, scatters the seed over its great flatbreads barbari and sangak, and presses it for oil. Sesame, ancient on the Iranian plateau, threads through the sweets and breads of the Persian table and the wider Islamic world it helped to shape.
- Ardeh-o-shireh (Persian sesame paste with grape syrup)
Kano, Hausaland (northern Nigeria) — c. 1000 CE
Carried south up the Nile and west across the Sahel, sesame becomes benniseed, a staple of the dryland farming of West Africa and one of the few oil crops able to thrive in the short rains of the savannah. In the Hausa kingdoms it is ridi, toasted and ground into the rich beniseed soup miyan ridi, eaten with the stiff grain porridge tuwo, and pressed for cooking oil; across the Sahel and the Sudan the seed is roasted into snacks and worked into porridges and sauces. Sesame here is also a plant of good fortune, grown at the edges of fields and gardens, a belief that will travel with the seed across the Atlantic.
- Miyan ridi (Hausa beniseed soup)
Mandalay, Upper Burma (Myanmar) — c. 1100 CE
In Burma sesame and its oil become foundations of the kitchen. Cold-pressed sesame oil (hnan zi) is a primary cooking fat, fragrant and golden, and toasted sesame is everywhere: stirred through the fermented tea-leaf salad lahpet thoke, ground with salt over the sticky rice eaten for breakfast across Upper Burma, and folded into the sesame oil rice hsi htamin sold from the morning stalls of Mandalay. Myanmar grows the seed in great quantity and stands amongst the largest producers in the world.
- Hsi htamin (Burmese sesame oil sticky rice)
- Lahpet thoke (fermented tea-leaf salad with toasted sesame)
Damascus, Syria (the Levant) — c. 1200 CE
In the medieval Arab kitchen the ground seed reaches its highest refinement as tahini (ṭaḥīna), a smooth, pourable paste of hulled, toasted sesame, and the thirteenth-century Arabic cookbooks of Syria and Egypt record it in the sauces and sweets that still define the Levantine table. Tahini becomes the soul of hummus and baba ganoush, the dressing thinned with lemon and garlic for fish and falafel, the green parsley sauce bakdounsiyeh, and, boiled with sugar or grape syrup, the sesame halva sold in every market. Toasted sesame seed is also pounded with wild thyme and sumac into za'atar, the seasoning of the everyday Levantine breakfast.
- Halawa tahiniyya (Levantine sesame halva)
- Hummus bi tahini
- Baba ganoush (smoked aubergine with tahini)
- Bakdounsiyeh (parsley and tahini sauce)
- Za'atar (with toasted sesame)
- Roasted figs with wild honey and sesame
Hanoi, Vietnam — c. 1300 CE
Sesame (vừng in the north, mè in the south) settles into the everyday Vietnamese kitchen. Toasted and pounded with salt and peanuts into muối vừng, it becomes the country's great seed seasoning, scattered over the sticky rice xôi that is eaten for breakfast and carried as travelling food, much as furikake is in Japan. The seed coats the chewy fried bánh rán, and in the old imperial city of Hue it is cooked with sugar and pulled into the chewy candy mè xửng.
- Xôi muối vừng (sticky rice with sesame and peanut salt)
Fez, Morocco — c. 1300 CE
Sesame is woven through the baking and confectionery of the Maghreb, carried west along the North African coast and enriched by the Andalusi cooks of the Moorish world. The seed crowns the round semolina-and-wheat khobz of every Moroccan medina, studs the honey-soaked, flower-shaped chebakia of Ramadan, and is toasted and ground with almonds and browned flour into sellou, the dense, spiced sweet kept for new mothers and the breaking of the fast. From the Maghreb and Moorish Spain, the habit of sesame in bread and sweets will cross the Atlantic with the Spanish.
- Sellou (Moroccan toasted sesame, almond, and browned flour sweet)
- Khobz (Moroccan sesame-seeded daily bread)
Istanbul, Ottoman Empire — c. 1525 CE
The Ottoman Empire spreads the sesame seed and its paste across three continents from its capital on the Bosphorus. The sesame-crusted bread ring simit is sold in the streets of Istanbul from at least 1525, dipped in grape molasses and rolled in seed before baking, and becomes the defining street food of the city. Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent keeps a dedicated Helvahane, a 'house of halva', beside his palace, and the tahini halva of the Ottoman world travels through the Balkans and on to the Jewish communities who carry it to America. Tahini also pools beneath the candied pumpkin of kabak tatlısı and binds the walnut filling of stuffed figs.
- Simit (Turkish sesame-crusted bread ring)
- Kabak tatlısı (candied pumpkin with tahini)
- İncir dolması (figs stuffed with walnut and tahini)
Oaxaca, New Spain (Mexico) — c. 1600 CE
Spanish ships carry sesame, which they call ajonjolí from the Arabic juljulān, to New Spain, where it takes root in the kitchens of central and southern Mexico. The toasted seed becomes inseparable from mole, ground into the long-simmered sauces of Puebla and Oaxaca and scattered whole over the finished dish, and tops the anise-scented sweet breads of the Mexican panadería. Sesame settles so deeply into the regional cooking that ajonjolí is now grown across the Mexican Pacific lowlands and treated as a native flavour of the country's festive table.
- Mole poblano (with toasted sesame)
- Pan dulce (Mexican sweet breads, sesame-topped)
Charleston, South Carolina (American South) — c. 1700 CE
Enslaved West Africans bring sesame across the Atlantic as benne, planting it in their gardens for food and for the good fortune it was held to carry, and by the early eighteenth century it is growing across the Carolina Lowcountry. In the Gullah Geechee kitchen the toasted seed becomes the benne wafer, a thin, brittle, intensely nutty biscuit of Charleston, as well as benne brittle and the thickening of benne soup; the earliest published American recipe for a sesame dish appears in Sarah Rutledge's The Carolina Housewife of 1847. Benne is one of the clearest surviving threads binding the cooking of the American South to West Africa.
- Benne wafers (Charleston Gullah sesame wafers)
Port-au-Prince, Haiti (the Caribbean) — c. 1750 CE
The same Atlantic crossing that planted benne in the Carolinas carried sesame into the Caribbean, where enslaved and free Africans made the toasted seed a fixture of the islands' confectionery. In Haiti it is bound with cane sugar and groundnuts into the brittle tablèt, sold from trays at the roadside; in Jamaica it is wangla, the sesame seed cooked with sugar into chewy 'wangla drops'. The seed remains a small but tenacious staple of Caribbean street sweets, another living memory of the West African benne it descends from.
- Tablettes (Haitian groundnut and sesame brittle)
Taiwan — c. 1950 CE
Toasted sesame oil is one of the defining fats of the Taiwanese kitchen, carried across the strait by Fujianese settlers and the post-war migration and made wholly Taiwanese. It is the soul of mayou ji (麻油雞, sesame oil chicken), the restorative dish of ginger, rice wine, and dark sesame oil eaten in winter and by new mothers, and it is the first of the three cups in san bei ji (三杯雞, 'three-cup chicken'), the island's beloved dish of chicken braised with garlic in equal measures of sesame oil, soy sauce, and rice wine, and finished with a great handful of Thai basil. Sesame, seed and oil alike, runs through the snacks, sweets, and tonics of Taiwan.
- San bei ji (Taiwanese three-cup chicken, the first cup sesame oil)
