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Candied Popcorn
1 1/2 cups sugar or maple syrup 1 tablespoon butter 3 tablespoons water 3 quarts popped corn Boil sugar or syrup with butter and water until it spins a long thread; pour this on corn and if desired shape into balls. Candied nuts may be prepared in the same way.
A two-ingredient syrup poured over hot corn. Everything depends on how far you cook the sugar, and the original's phrase for that is the one thing worth pinning down.
- "Spins a long thread"This is the old test for syrup drizzled from a spoon: thread stage, roughly 230-235F on a thermometer. That gives a soft, sticky coating that may just hold together in balls while warm, though it will not set firm. If you want a hard, brittle, crackling shell instead, take the syrup to hard crack, about 300-310F, and expect it to set almost on contact.
- Popcorn quantityThree quarts of popped corn is about a third of a cup of unpopped kernels, or roughly 12 cups popped. Salted, unbuttered popcorn works best; the salt sharpens the sugar.
- Maple syrup is not a straight swapMaple syrup already contains water, so omit the 3 tablespoons of water and boil longer to reach the same stage. Watch it closely as it darkens fast at the top of the range.
- Sift out the unpopped kernelsShake the popped corn in a colander before saucing. An unpopped kernel buried in a candy ball is what cracks teeth.
- Warm the corn, work fastSpread the corn in a low oven at 200F while the syrup cooks, and use a very large bowl. Cold corn chills the syrup on contact and you get sugar lumps in one corner instead of an even coat.
- Shaping the ballsButter your hands generously and press lightly rather than squeezing; compacted balls turn dense and hard. The mixture stays workable for only a couple of minutes, so shape as you go.
- Yield and keepingExpect roughly ten to twelve balls the size of a tennis ball, or a tray of loose candied corn. Wrap balls individually in waxed paper; in humid conditions the coating can turn tacky quickly.
- For the nut versionNuts hold far more heat than popcorn and need less syrup by volume. Toast them first, then coat and turn out onto a buttered sheet or marble to separate while cooling.
Popcorn balls were a fixture of American home candy-making from the mid-nineteenth century onward, appearing at church socials, Hallowe'en and Christmas, and turning up in cookbooks alongside molasses taffy and butter-scotch as one of the cheap sweets a family could make without a confectioner's skill. The maple option may reflect regions where syrup was made at home and cane sugar cost cash. That the instructions rely on a hand test rather than a temperature is typical of the period: candy thermometers existed but were far from standard kitchen equipment, so cooks learned to read syrup by how it spun, balled or cracked in cold water.