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Candies and Candy Making: Popcorn
POPCORN CANDY Popcorn is used as an ingredient of candies in several forms, including the ordinary popcorn balls, popcorn cakes, bars, or nougats, and crystallized popcorn.
Choose for this purpose a quality of popcorn which pops light and tender, and select only the kernels that are fully open, discarding burned or partially opened kernels.
Shake the corn in a coarse sieve to free it from dust and chaff. It will be found a great aid in popping corn to swing a wire from a hook in the ceiling having a loop at the right height above the stove through which the handle of the popper can be passed. Thus the popper may be held over an open coal fire with less labor.
To roll popcorn balls, dip the hands into very cold water before forming each ball and work quickly before the candy hardens. To improve the appearance of the balls, and also to prevent them sticking to the fingers, cut out a piece of tissue or waxed paper in circular form by cutting around the edge of a large pie plate, lay the ball on this, bring the edges together and twist them up at the top. Store popcorn balls in a cold place to prevent the popcorn from becoming tough. To Make Popcorn Balls.-Boil to the thread about 2½ pounds of sugar with pound of glucose and 1 pint of water. Place the popcorn in an earthenware bowl, pour the sirup over it, mix with 2 wooden paddles and form into balls with the wet hands.
Or boil pint of molasses about 12 minutes to the stiff-ball degree.
Place 2 quarts of popcorn in a wet earthenware bowl, pour the boiling molasses over it, mix with paddles, and roll with the wet hands.
Or for a better quality of popcorn balls for home use, add to the above a good-sized piece of butter and flavor with lemon extract or otherwise as desired.
Or boil to the hard snap 1 pint of sugar, teaspoonful of butter, 1 tablespoonful of vinegar with about teacupful of soft water.
Have ready about 1 peck of freshly popped corn in a wet pan or tub, dip the boiling sirup over it, mix with wooden paddles, roll with the wet hands.
Popcorn Cakes. - Prepare sirup according to any of the above rules, but crush the corn with a rolling-pin.
Stir the corn into the kettle when the sirup is at the hard-snap stage, and pour into buttered tins. Lay over the top a piece of buttered or waxed paper, and let stand under pressure to harden. When cold and hard cut into cakes with a thin, sharp knife blade.
Crystallized Popcorn.-Place in an iron kettle or frying pan 1 teacupful of granulated sugar, 1 tablespoonful of butter, or less, 3 tablespoonfuls of water. Boil to the hard snap, stir in 2 or 3 quarts of popcorn and continue stirring until it is entirely dry. This amount of sirup will give a heavy coating of sugar to 2 quarts, or a lighter coat to 3 quarts.
A beginner is apt to think that the sirup is not sufficient for the quantity of corn, but with constant stirring it will come out all right. Continue to stir until the corn is dry, but take care that the fire is not hot enough to scorch it. Nuts may be crystallized in a similar way.
A set of variations on one technique: cook a sugar syrup to a known stage, pour it over popped corn, and shape or press it before it sets. Everything depends on hitting the right temperature, which the original expresses in the old cold-water stages.
- Missing fractionsThis text appears to have lost several fractions in transcription: "pound of glucose," "pint of molasses," "teacupful of soft water" and "teaspoonful of butter" all read oddly as printed and most likely carried a fraction. Treat the proportions as guides and work by the syrup temperature rather than by the stated weights.
- The sugar stages in degreesThread is about 230°F; the ball stages run roughly 245–265°F, with "stiff ball" at the firmer end; hard snap (hard crack) is about 300–310°F. A thermometer removes most of the guesswork; the cold-water test is the older method the book assumes.
- Hard crack versus ballThe choice of stage decides the result. Ball-stage syrup gives a chewy ball you can squeeze together; hard-crack gives the brittle, glassy coating wanted for cakes, bars and crystallized corn. Do not substitute one for the other.
- Glucose is corn syrupThe "glucose" of the period is commercial glucose syrup — light corn syrup is the direct modern equivalent. Its job is to prevent the sucrose from crystallizing, which is why the plain sugar-and-vinegar version uses acid instead.
- A peck of popped cornA peck is 8 quarts. That is a great deal of corn for the small quantity of syrup given in that variation and will produce a very lightly coated, loosely bound ball; halve the corn for something that holds together.
- TeacupfulA teacup in this period is roughly 6 fl oz, not the 8 oz measuring cup.
- Popping the cornThe ceiling-hung wire loop was for holding a wire basket popper over a coal range. A heavy covered pot with a film of oil, or an air popper, does the same work; the instruction to sieve out chaff and discard unopened kernels is still worth following, since old maids in a ball are what break teeth.
- Crystallized popcornThe syrup here really does look insufficient — a single teacupful of sugar for 2 to 3 quarts of corn. Constant stirring off high heat is what turns the thin coating opaque and dry as it cools and the sugar recrystallizes. Stop stirring too soon and it stays tacky.
- Molten sugarSyrup at 300°F causes deep burns and will not shake off skin. Dip hands in ice water as directed, and let ball-stage mixtures cool a few seconds in the bowl before shaping; children should not handle it.
- StorageWrap balls individually as described and keep them airtight. Humidity, not age, is what makes popcorn candy tough and sticky — the "cold place" advice matters less than a sealed container.
Popcorn candy belongs to the moment when cheap refined sugar, commercial glucose and abundant American field corn met in the same kitchen. Popped corn was familiar in North America long before it was sweetened — the practice is generally traced to Indigenous cultivation of flint and popping corns — but the molasses or sugar-bound ball is a nineteenth-century confection, sold by street vendors and at fairs and made at home around Hallowe'en and Christmas. Books of household discoveries like this one treated candy making as a semi-professional skill, hence the trade vocabulary of thread, stiff ball and hard snap, and the assumption that a cook might scale up to 2½ pounds of sugar at a time. The detail of the wire loop hung from the ceiling to take the weight of a popper over a coal fire is a reminder that popping corn was heavy, hot work before the sealed pot and the electric element.