The sesame seed is a foundation of civilization, one of humanity’s oldest cultivated crops, but when I was growing up in the Corn Belt of the United States, it was primarily known as “those white things on burger buns.”

In those pale, teardrop-shaped flecks, it was hard to detect the nutty flavor that I found in the toasted oil my mother drizzled into the dough for her cong you bing, scallion pancakes. They tasted only vaguely like the black seeds from the Persian market, which we toasted and ground, then sipped as zhi ma hu, sesame porridge, or rolled into the sweet centers of tang yuan, soft rice-flour dumplings. We used zhi ma jiang, an umber paste of ground sesame, to flavor sauces for everything from noodles to hot pot. Only later, once I began eating falafel slathered in garlicky tahini sauce on late nights in college, did I draw the connection from tahini to zhi ma to the idle garnish on the burgers of my youth.

Sesame is everywhere. It has come to represent a great deal to a great many different cooks around the world. But in spite of all its many variations in appearance, flavor, and application, the sesame in all the world’s oils, pastes, and bread toppings is one and the same species: Sesamum indicum, first cultivated in the Indus Valley at Harappa (current-day Pakistan) some four thousand years ago.

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