What Does Black Sesame Taste Like?

Black sesame is the same plant as the white sesame on a burger bun, Sesamum indicum, with a dark seed coat. White seed is usually hulled. Black seed is almost always sold with the hull on, and the hull changes both the taste and the color.

Across East Asia it is a dessert ingredient. Sweetened black sesame paste fills tangyuan, the glutinous rice balls, and ground black sesame with rice makes zhimahu, a sweet soup. In the US it shows up mostly in ice cream and café lattes. In our tracking of 25 beverage terms, "black sesame latte" grew 51% in US search over the twelve months to September 2026, the third-fastest rise in the set. See fastest-growing beverage flavors.

Roasting makes the flavor

Raw sesame is mild and oily. The flavor people call black sesame is made in the roaster.

By volume, most of what roasting creates is pyrazines, the roasted, nutty compounds you also get from roasted peanuts, cocoa and coffee. In one study of sesame oil, pyrazines rose only slightly up to 150 °C, then climbed faster than anything else from 170 °C. Above 210 °C, smoky phenols jumped, mostly guaiacol.²

The compounds that carry the character are fewer and far stronger. A study of sesame roasted at 180 °C for ten minutes found 41 odor-active compounds. Four stood out: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, 2-furfurylthiol, 2-phenylethylthiol and furaneol.¹

Two of those explain the pairings. The coffee-like thiol is why black sesame sits so easily next to espresso. The 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline is the compound that makes pandan smell of jasmine rice.

One limit: these studies analyzed sesame without singling out black seed. We found no published study comparing the roasted aroma of black and white seed directly.

Where the bitterness and the gray come from

The extra bitterness, compared with white sesame, comes from the hull. It also adds crunch. Roasting deepens the bitter edge, and over-roasting pushes it to burnt.

The color is melanin. A 2022 study isolated it from black sesame and found it does not dissolve in water and survives heat.³ That has practical consequences:

• The color only comes with the seed. A black sesame flavor with no seed in it gives you no gray.
• It will not dissolve into a drink. A black sesame latte is an opaque suspension, not a tinted liquid.
• Ice cream turns gray, not black. Vegetable carbon, the usual food black in Europe, is not a permitted food color in the US. Darker usually means more paste.

Building a black sesame product

Paste first, flavor second. Roasted black sesame paste gives flavor, color and body at once. A natural flavor built from pyrazines and roast notes can lift a product where cost or texture caps the paste level. It cannot supply the color.

Cold hides it. Roast notes read weaker in frozen ice cream than in the mix. Taste at serving temperature. The fat in the paste and the cream helps carry the aroma.

Mill it fine and stabilize it. Hull fragments read as grit. In a drink, the solids settle and the oil separates, so you need fine milling and a stabilizer system.

Plan for staling. Sesame is one of the oiliest seeds. Roasted paste goes stale and then rancid as that oil oxidizes. Keep it cool and away from air, and set shelf life on the paste, not only on the finished product.

Declare it. Sesame has been a major food allergen in the US since 1 January 2023, and the rule covers ingredients made from sesame.⁴ If your flavor contains sesame oil or any other sesame-derived material, sesame goes on the label. Get the composition from your flavor house in writing.