sesameseeds: simit crumbs for your LaTeX documents
The coffee stain has long been the mark of a manuscript that was actually read. In Istanbul, though, the reading snack of choice is the simit, the sesame-crusted bread ring sold from red carts on every ferry pier. A baked simit is dry, so it leaves no stain, but it cannot be eaten without shedding sesame seeds and crumbs of caramelised crust onto whatever lies beneath it.
sesameseeds brings that authenticity to LaTeX. Every page gets a random but reproducible scatter of oven-roasted seeds and crumbs, the same on every compilation, so the mess survives peer review. You can also sprinkle seeds by hand, protect a page with a napkin, and leave the ring of debris where a simit was put down to answer the phone.
Download: sesameseeds.zip (package, demo and README) · sesameseeds.sty · demo PDF · demo source
Version 1.1, 3 November 2026. Released under the LaTeX Project Public License 1.3c.
Install
Put sesameseeds.sty next to your .tex file, or in your local texmf tree (~/Library/texmf/tex/latex/sesameseeds/ on macOS, ~/texmf/tex/latex/sesameseeds/ on Linux). It needs LaTeX 2020-10 or newer, TikZ and pgfopts, all included in TeX Live and MiKTeX, and works with pdfLaTeX, XeLaTeX and LuaLaTeX.
Use
\usepackage[mess=medium]{sesameseeds} % none | light | medium | heavy | catastrophic
The automatic mess appears on every page without a second run. A few more things it can do:
\usepackage[heavy, randomseed=42, black=0.1, firstpage=false]{sesameseeds}
\sesamesetup{mess=catastrophic} % applies to pages shipped from now on
\nosesame % this page was read with a napkin
\sesameoff ... \sesameon % pause and resume the mess
% Placed by hand, measured from the bottom-left corner of the page
% (these use remember picture, so compile twice)
\sesamesprinkle[count=25, spread=1.5cm]{14cm}{6cm}
\simitring[radius=6cm]{10.5cm}{15cm} % the ring left where the simit was put down
\sesameseed[angle=30, roast=0.9]{3cm}{3cm}
For the camera-ready version, \usepackage[off]{sesameseeds} turns everything off, including the debris you placed by hand. Or not.
Options
| Key | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
mess | medium | none, light, medium, heavy or catastrophic |
off | turn everything off, hand-placed debris included | |
seeds | a fixed number of seeds per page | |
probability | 0.8 | chance that a page gets anything at all |
randomseed | 1525 | change it for a different mess that is still reproducible |
crumbs | true | crumbs of caramelised crust |
layer | foreground | background puts the seeds under the text |
firstpage | true | allow seeds on the title page |
size, spread, stray | 1, 2.5cm, 0.2 | seed size, size of the fall-out zone, fraction of seeds that bounced away |
roast, black | 0.5, 0 | golden (0) to deep-brown (1) roast, fraction of black sesame |
crumbratio, shadow | 0.35, 0.28 | crumbs per seed, shadow opacity |
count, radius, angle | 15 / 60, 6.5cm, random | for the manual commands |
The demo document
On the Stochastic Deposition of Sesamum indicum Seeds on Scholarly Manuscripts, by A. Hungry Academic of the Department of Breakfast Studies, shows every feature: a page where the simit was put down to answer a phone call, a page read with a napkin, and an appendix typeset while the ferry crossed the wake of a passing tanker.
\simitring).
mess=catastrophic, as the ferry crosses a wake.Afiyet olsun.