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Corn Balls
5 quarts popped corn 1/2 cup white corn syrup 2 cups sugar 1/3 teaspoon, each, salt and vinegar 1 1/2 cups water 1 tablespoon vanilla Boil sugar, water and corn syrup without stirring until thermometer registers 260 Degree F.; then add remaining ingredients and let boil to 264 Degree F. Have corn in a large pan, and pour on gradually the syrup, using a spoon all of the time to turn corn that it may be evenly coated. Make into balls, and let stand in a cold place until brittle.
A straightforward boiled-sugar popcorn ball, and the whole thing hinges on the thermometer. The two-stage cook — 260°F, then additions, then 264°F — is not decoration; it sets the final texture.
- The syrup temperature is the recipe260°F and 264°F both sit in the hard-ball range, and that narrow window is what sets the final texture. A few degrees low gives sticky balls that slump, a few degrees high gives a syrup that shatters off the corn. Calibrate the thermometer in boiling water first and read it at eye level with the bulb submerged but off the pan bottom.
- Do not stirThe instruction to boil "without stirring" prevents sugar crystals forming on the pan wall and seeding the whole batch grainy. Wash the sides down once with a wet pastry brush at the start and then leave it alone.
- The vinegar and the second boilThe vinegar is an acid that inverts some of the sucrose, further insurance against crystallization. Adding it and the vanilla at 260°F drops the temperature briefly; the recipe simply asks you to bring it back to 264°F.
- Vanilla at that heatA tablespoon of extract hitting 260°F syrup will spit and throw off alcohol vapor. Stand back, pour it down the side of the pan, and keep the pan off any open flame at that moment.
- How much popcornFive quarts of popped corn is roughly 1/2 cup of unpopped kernels. Pick out unpopped kernels before you begin — they are the usual cause of a broken tooth.
- Warm the corn and the panPopcorn straight from the pot coats far more evenly than cold corn, which chills the syrup on contact and leaves clumps. A very large metal or oiled ceramic bowl, warmed in a low oven, buys you working time.
- Forming the ballsOil or butter your hands generously and press lightly rather than squeezing; compacted balls turn hard and dense. Work fast — the syrup stiffens as it cools, and it is hot enough to burn, so some cooks wear thin cotton gloves under the oil.
- Yield and keepingExpect about 12 to 15 balls of tennis-ball size. Wrap each in waxed paper once fully cold; they keep for several days, less in humid weather, when the sugar draws moisture and the balls go tacky.
Popcorn balls belong to the American nineteenth century, when cheap cane sugar and glucose syrup met a grain that had been popped in North America long before European arrival. They were a fixture of church socials, Fourth of July stands and, by around the turn of the century, Halloween — the era's homemade equivalent of penny candy, made in quantity because five quarts of popped corn cost almost nothing. The white corn syrup here is worth noticing: commercial glucose syrup became a household staple in the early twentieth century and was promoted precisely for this job, keeping boiled sugar smooth and non-grainy in confectionery a home cook could manage.