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Kornettes
1 egg-white 1/3 cup light brown sugar 2 teaspoons butter 3/4 cup chopped popcorn 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Beat the white of the egg very stiff and, still beating, mix in the sugar. Melt the butter and into this stir the chopped popcorn, salt and vanilla. Fold the two mixtures together and drop by spoonfuls on a greased baking-sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for fifteen minutes.
A meringue-bound popcorn drop from the era when popcorn was a pantry staple rather than a snack food. The recipe is short and the whole thing hinges on how the popcorn is prepared.
- Chopping the popcornPop plain kernels with no butter, salt or sweet coating, then chop the popped corn coarsely with a knife or pulse it briefly in a processor. It should be in rough pieces, not powder, or the batter will have nothing to hold. Three quarters of a cup chopped is roughly two to three cups of whole popped corn.
- Butter measured in teaspoonsTwo teaspoons is correct and deliberately small; the butter is there to coat the corn, not to enrich the batter. More fat will slacken the egg white and the drops will spread flat.
- Cool the butterMelt the butter and let it come back to barely warm before tossing in the corn. Hot fat folded into stiff egg white deflates it immediately.
- Beating the whiteBeat to stiff peaks first, then add the brown sugar a spoonful at a time while beating, until the meringue is glossy. Sift or rub out any lumps in the brown sugar beforehand, as they will not dissolve in fifteen minutes.
- FoldingFold in three or four additions with a spatula and stop as soon as the corn is coated. The mixture will look loose and sticky rather than like a cookie dough.
- Baking sheetParchment is easier than grease here; a meringue of this kind grips a bare pan. Bake at 350F for fifteen minutes, until the tops are set and lightly coloured, then lift them off while still slightly warm.
- Yield and keepingThe batch is small; how many drops you get depends on the size of your spoonfuls. They stay crisp only briefly, as the sugar draws damp from the air and softens the corn; store airtight and eat the same day.
Kornettes belong to a family of thrifty American "kisses" -- a single egg white and a little sugar stretched around whatever crisp thing was on hand, whether cornflakes, oats, chopped nuts or, here, popcorn. Popcorn was popped at home over the stove and sold by street vendors in America from the later nineteenth century, and it appeared in candy and in balls bound with molasses well before recipes like this one. The spelling with a K may reflect the period's fondness for coined, product-style names in recipe columns.