AMONG THE MANY foods that have shaped the culinary heritage of Charleston and the Low-country of South Carolina are the tiny benne seed and its descendent, the sesame seed. “Benne” is a West African name for these potent seeds. Benne seeds came to colonial America with enslaved Black people from Africa and the Caribbean, marking the beginning of benne’s now 300-plus-year history in the United States. (Sesame plants were cultivated in Asia thousands of years ago, before they made their way to Africa.)
Enslaved people in the Southern United States often grew them in gardens and sowed them among plantation rows. High in protein and
