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To Pop Corn
Shell perfectly dry pop-corn. Put about half a cupful (one gill) of corn in an ordinary corn popper, a square wire pan with a long handle. Shake it over a clear hot fire until thoroughly dry, and as soon as it begins to pop shake rapidly. If the fire is too hot it will scorch the corn and prevent its popping. The more rapidly you shake, exposing all sides of the corn to the air, the better and more quickly it pops. When the popping ceases open the popper, turn the corn into a large bowl. Have ready about two tablespoonfuls of melted butter; pour this slowly over the corn, stirring constantly with a wooden fork. The corn must be thoroughly greased without being oily. Dust lightly with salt and it is ready to serve. This is the more wholesome way of serving pop-corn. Some prefer it moist ened with syrup, and in that case it is more indigestible.
A wire-basket popper over an open fire, translated to a stovetop. The method holds up; only the equipment has changed.
- The measureHalf a cup, which the author correctly glosses as one gill, is the right quantity for a single batch. Half a cup of kernels yields roughly 4 quarts popped, enough for three or four people.
- Substitute a heavy potA wire popper needs an open flame beneath it and radiant heat around it, which a flat electric or induction hob will not give. Use a heavy saucepan with a lid and a tablespoon or two of oil, shaking it the same way the original demands.
- Heat is the hingeThe instruction to avoid too hot a fire is the one that matters. Kernels pop because the moisture inside flashes to steam; scorch the hull first and the steam escapes without the burst. Medium-high, not maximum.
- Dry corn only"Perfectly dry" is slightly misleading to a modern reader. Popcorn needs about 13 percent internal moisture to pop at all; what the author means is that the outside must not be damp and the kernels must not be old and desiccated. Store in a sealed jar, not the refrigerator.
- ShellingThe recipe assumes corn still on the cob, sold that way through the early twentieth century. Loose kernels from a bag skip this step entirely.
- ButterTwo tablespoons for half a cup of unpopped corn is a light coating by modern standards and is deliberately so. Pour it in a thin stream while stirring, or it soaks two handfuls and leaves the rest bare.
- The syrup versionMoistening with syrup gives the sort of thing sold as caramel corn or made up into popcorn balls, both already familiar in the period. The claim that it is "more indigestible" is period dietary opinion, not a warning.
Popcorn is a distinct variety of flint maize, grown in the Americas for millennia and long predating its role as a snack; the hard hull is what allows pressure to build until the kernel bursts. The wire popper with a long handle described here was standard nineteenth-century American hearth equipment, sold cheaply and used over coal ranges and open fires alike, and popped corn was a common winter evening amusement in the household rather than a commercial product. Street and fairground vending expanded through the late 1800s, but the move into cinemas came later, in the 1920s and 30s. The author's insistence that buttered and salted corn is "more wholesome" than the syrup-coated kind reflects the era's preoccupation with digestibility, a category that carried as much weight in domestic cookbooks as flavour did.