Black vs. White Sesame Seeds: Same Plant, Different Seed Coat

Black and white sesame come from the same plant, Sesamum indicum.¹² Color is a trait of the cultivar, and black seeds get their look from a dark, melanin-like pigment in the seed coat.²³ Hulling is a separate thing. White sesame is often sold hulled and black sesame usually whole (that’s the usual retail pattern, though we couldn’t find a figure on it), and hulling changes the seed’s makeup more than color does. In the kitchen they taste close enough to swap. The bigger differences are how they look and, for whole versus hulled seed, how much calcium they carry.

Side by side

For each in depth, see the black sesame seeds and sesame seeds profiles.

Black is not just “unhulled”

You’ll often hear that black sesame is just white sesame with the hull left on. It isn’t. PROSEA lists white, gray, yellow-white, brown and black seeded types of sesame as a cultivar trait,² and Katzer’s Spice Pages says sesame seeds can be off-white, brown, gray or black.⁶ A 2022 study pulled the dark pigment out of black sesame seed coats and found it similar to melanin from other sources.³ The pigment sits in the coat, so hulling strips it off. Hulling is a processing step. It isn’t what makes a seed black or white in the first place.

That matters because two different comparisons get tangled together:

• Black versus white is a difference between cultivars.
• Whole versus hulled is a difference in processing, and it applies to pale seed too. See hulled vs. unhulled sesame seeds.

What the composition data can and can’t show

Calcium. USDA’s numbers show what hulling does: 989 mg of calcium per 100 g in whole, toasted sesame seed, against 131 mg in toasted, hulled kernels.⁸⁹ Those entries don’t say what color the seed was.¹⁰ So when people say black sesame has more calcium than white, they’re really comparing whole seed to hulled. We couldn’t find any published analysis that compares the calcium in black and white seed processed the same way.

Oil and lignans. A 2017 review in Frontiers in Plant Science, summing up earlier studies, says white sesame seeds typically have more oil, sesamin or sesamolin, while black seeds usually have more ash and carbohydrate and less protein, oil and moisture.⁴ That’s the review’s summary of other work, with no sample counts given, so read it as a general tendency, not a figure for the bag in your pantry. Sesamin and sesamolin are the lignans PROSEA credits with giving sesame oil its remarkable resistance to oxidation.²

Pigment and flavonoids. The 2022 pigment study found that flavonoid content in sesame rises as the seed coat gets darker.³ That’s a finding about composition. It doesn’t show any health effect.

Health claims. A 2016 meta-analysis of ten controlled trials found that sesame lowered blood triglycerides, but the effect came from sesame oil, not whole or ground seeds, and total cholesterol didn’t change significantly.¹¹ None of this backs up the idea that black sesame is healthier than white.

Differences that change the dish

Look. This is the big one. Black seeds pop against pale breads, rice and noodles. White seeds vanish into light doughs and stand out on dark crusts.

Flavor. Sesame tastes nutty, and toasting boosts that flavor dramatically. Katzer notes that pyrazines dominate the flavor under mild toasting at 160 °C.⁶ PROSEA says sesame seed’s phytic and oxalic acids combine with calcium to give a slightly bitter taste.² Black seed comes across earthier and a little more bitter, and hulled white seed milder and sweeter, but we couldn’t find a sensory study comparing them.

Toasting. You can’t see dark seeds brown, so go by smell. The Woks of Life suggests toasting even pre-roasted black seeds briefly in a dry pan or wok until they’re fragrant.⁵

Cuisine. The Woks of Life describes sweet black sesame soup (zhī ma hú) as a traditional Chinese dessert, and lists black sesame tang yuan, ice cream and cake among other black sesame sweets.⁵ More broadly, PROSEA says sesame is a major ingredient in sweets, a garnish for breads and pastries, and the base of tahini.²

Can one stand in for the other?

Yes, in most dishes. They’re the same species, so this isn’t really a flavor substitution at all.

• Ratio: 1 to 1 by volume. No source publishes a ratio, and for flavor you don’t need one in most dishes. Expect a change in looks and, with black seed, a slightly stronger, more bitter edge.
• Where it matters. Black sesame soup and other black sesame desserts depend on the seed’s color, so white seed changes the dish.⁵ Anything that counts on hulled white seed for a pale, smooth paste will turn gray and more bitter with black seed.
• Poppy seed as a look-alike. If you just want dark specks on a roll, poppy seed comes close by weight. USDA gives 9 g for a tablespoon of whole sesame and 8.8 g for a tablespoon of poppy seed, so a 1:1 swap by volume uses almost the same weight (by our math, and that’s weight only).¹⁰¹² Poppy seeds are grayish blue to dark blue,¹³ and they don’t taste like sesame. See sesame seed substitutes and poppy seeds.

Safety

Sesame became the ninth major food allergen in the United States on 1 January 2023, and US law requires labels to name the food source of every major allergen.⁷ That goes for black and white seed alike.

What isn’t known

• No published analysis compares black and white sesame processed the same way (both whole or both hulled) for calcium.
• The oil and lignan tendencies come from a review’s summary of earlier studies; we didn’t open the primary studies.
• No sensory study compares the flavor of black and white seed.
• We found no production or price figure for black sesame specifically.

Related

• Black sesame seeds and sesame seeds profiles
• Hulled vs. unhulled sesame seeds
• Sesame seed substitutes and poppy seeds
• Gomasio, furikake and shichimi togarashi
• Cooking with za’atar