Home › Confections › Sugared Popped Corn
Sugared Popped Corn
2 quarts popped corn 2 tablespoons butter 2 cups brown sugar 1/2 cup water Put butter in saucepan, and when melted add sugar and water. Bring to boiling-point, and let boil sixteen minutes. Pour over corn, and stir until every kernel is well coated with sugar. 5 quarts popped corn 2 cups sugar 1½ cups water
A two-ingredient caramel poured over popped corn, given in Fannie Farmer's usual telegraphic style. The trailing line of quantities is a second, plainer version of the same recipe using white sugar and no butter.
- The sixteen minutes is a temperatureThe sixteen minutes is standing in for a thermometer reading -- Boiling for a fixed time was the older way of judging a syrup, but how far it actually gets depends on the pan, the heat and the rate of evaporation, and the recipe gives neither a temperature nor a cold-water test. Watch the syrup rather than the clock, and use a candy thermometer if you have one.
- Two recipes, not oneStray quantities at the end -- The final three figures (5 quarts popped corn, 2 cups sugar, 1½ cups water) come with no method of their own. They may be a plainer variant of the same recipe or the beginning of the next one; the text as given does not say.
- Two quarts of popped cornThat is about 1/4 cup of unpopped kernels, or 2 to 2½ ounces popped. Five quarts is roughly 1/2 to 2/3 cup unpopped.
- Warm the cornSpread the popped corn in a large bowl or roasting pan and hold it in a 200F oven while the syrup cooks. Cold corn chills the caramel on contact and it sets in lumps before you can coat everything.
- Stir with a wooden spoon or oiled handsThe syrup is well above the temperature of boiling water and clings. Buttered parchment or a silicone mat is the modern surface for turning it out and breaking it apart once cool.
- Brown sugar behaves differentlyNineteenth-century brown sugar was less refined and more variable than today's, much of which is refined white sugar with molasses added back. Dark brown sugar is probably the closer match for flavor; molasses solids scorch more readily than plain white sugar, so keep the heat moderate at the end.
- Yield and keepingThe first version fills a large bowl and serves six to eight as a snack. Stored airtight it stays crisp two or three days; humidity turns it sticky.
Sugared popped corn sits in the Confections chapter alongside fondant, molasses candy and salted nuts — all things a household made at home because commercial confectionery was expensive and of uncertain quality. Popcorn was cheap, American and abundant, and coating it in boiled sugar was one way of turning a bulk grain into something festive. The version with butter resembles what would later be sold as caramel corn, though the commercial product usually adds molasses or corn syrup to keep the coating from crystallizing. Farmer's book, first published in 1896, was notable for insisting on level measurements, which is why the quantities here are exact while the cooking instruction is still the older kind — a fixed number of minutes rather than a temperature, since candy thermometers were not yet standard equipment in a home kitchen.