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Popcorn Candies: Balls
Corn Balls 5 quarts popped corn 2 cups sugar 1/2 cup white corn syrup 1½ cups water 1/3 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vinegar 1 tablespoon vanilla Carefully pick over the corn, discarding all that is not tender, and put perfect kernels into a large pan. Put sugar, corn syrup, and water in saucepan, stir until well mixed, bring to boiling point, and boil without stirring to 260 F., or until it cracks when tried in cold water. Add vinegar and vanilla, and boil to 264 degrees F. Remove from fire, and pour slowly over the corn, stirring and turning over the corn with a spoon, so that every kernel will be evenly coated with syrup. Make sugared corn into balls, and wrap in wax paper.
Molasses Corn Balls 3 quarts popped corn 1 cup molasses 1/2 cup sugar 1 tablespoon butter 1/2 teaspoon salt Pick over popped corn, discarding all hard kernels, put in a large pan, and sprinkle with salt.
Melt butter in saucepan, add molasses and sugar, and boil to 270 degrees F., or until candy is brittle when tried in cold water. Pour mixture slowly over the corn, stirring constantly. Shape into balls, using as little pressure as possible. Wrap in wax paper.
Maple Corn Balls 3 quarts popped corn 1 cup maple syrup 1/2 cup sugar 1 tablespoon butter 1/2 teaspoon salt Pop corn and pick over, discarding kernels that do not pop, and put in large kettle. Melt butter in saucepan, and add syrup and sugar. Bring to the boiling point, and let boil until mixture will become brittle when tried in cold water. Pour mixture gradually, while stirring constantly, over corn which has been sprinkled with salt. Shape into balls, using as little pressure as possible.
Popcorn Nuggets 2 cups sugar 2/3cup water 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar 1/3 cup dark molasses 2 tablespoons butter Few grains salt 5quarts popcorn Put sugar, water, and cream of tartar in saucepan, bring to boiling point, and boil without stirring to 280 degrees F., or until syrup will crack when tried in cold water. Remove thermometer, add molasses, butter, and salt, and boil, stirring constantly, until candy will become very brittle when tried in cold water, being careful that it does not burn. Have ready a pan containing popped corn free from any hard kernels; pour candy over it, mixing thoroughly. Spread lightly on a buttered marble slab or large platter, and when firm cut in pieces, or break up in little bunches of three to six kernels of corn. Popcorn Cake 1 quart popped corn 1 cup sugar 1/4 cup corn syrup 1/4 cup water 2 tablespoons molasses 1 tablespoon butter 1 teaspoon salt Pick over the popped corn, discarding all hard kernels, and finely chop the corn, or put through meat grinder, using a coarse knife. Put sugar, corn syrup, and water in saucepan, stir until it boils, and cook to 270 degrees F., or until candy cracks when tried in cold water; add molasses and butter, and cook to 290 degrees F., or until it is very hard when tried in cold water. Add corn, stir until well mixed, return to fire a moment to loosen it, then pour on buttered slab or tray, and roll with rolling pin as thin as possible. Cut in squares or break in small pieces. Molasses may be omitted. Sugared Popcorn 2 quarts popped corn 2 tablespoons butter 2 cups sugar 1/2 cup water Pick over popped corn, discarding all hard kernels. Melt butter in saucepan, add sugar and water, stir until dissolved, and boil to 238 degrees F., or until it will form a soft ball when tried in cold water. Pour over corn, and stir until every kernel is coated with sugar.
Six variations on the same idea: a sugar syrup boiled to a fixed stage and poured over popped corn. The thermometer readings are the whole recipe, and they are given precisely enough to follow as written.
- How much corn to popPopped volume, not kernels, is what is measured. Roughly 1/4 cup of unpopped kernels gives about 2 quarts, so 3 quarts needs something over 1/3 cup and 5 quarts nearer 2/3 cup. Pop extra, since the instruction to discard unpopped and hard kernels removes a fair amount.
- The temperatures are the hingeEvery version lives or dies on the reading. 238°F is soft ball and gives the loose, sandy coating of sugared popcorn; 260-270°F is hard ball to soft crack and gives balls that hold together but still yield to the teeth; 280-290°F is soft crack heading towards hard crack and gives the brittle sheets of the nuggets and the cake. Overshoot on the ball recipes and they set hard.
- Calibrate firstBoil water and check that the thermometer reads 212°F. At altitude, subtract about 1°F per 500 feet from every target temperature in these recipes, or the syrup will be cooked well past the intended stage.
- Vinegar and cream of tartarBoth are there as acid, to invert part of the sugar and keep the syrup from crystallising into a grainy mass. Neither is flavouring; the tablespoon of vanilla is doing that work in the first recipe.
- MolassesMolasses here is best read as an ordinary table or cooking grade rather than blackstrap. Blackstrap is bitter and much darker and will dominate the corn. Use unsulphured cooking molasses.
- Warm the cornNot stated, but it helps: popped corn held in a low oven, around 200°F, keeps the syrup fluid long enough to coat every kernel before it sets. Cold corn chills the syrup on contact and leaves clumps.
- Shaping the ballsButter your hands well and work fast, but let the mixture cool for a minute or two first — syrup at 264°F causes serious burns. The instruction to use as little pressure as possible is worth heeding; hard packing makes a dense ball that has to be gnawed.
- Slab and storageA buttered marble slab can be a buttered rimmed baking sheet, or a silicone mat. Sugar work at hard crack picks up atmospheric moisture and turns sticky, so wrap the balls in wax paper as directed and store the nuggets and cake airtight; avoid making any of these on a humid day.
- YieldNo yield is given. A 3-quart batch should give roughly a dozen balls of about 2 1/2 inches, with the 5-quart batches proportionally more; the popcorn cake makes a single thin sheet from a quart of corn, cut or broken into small pieces.
Popcorn balls are often said to be among the oldest surviving American home confections, showing up in printed cookbooks by the mid-nineteenth century, when molasses was the ordinary sweetener and corn was the ordinary grain; they became fixed in the autumn calendar as a Halloween and Christmas-tree treat, handed out at doors long before commercially wrapped candy made that unwise. What dates this particular set is the presence of white corn syrup alongside molasses and maple: glucose syrup sold for household use was still fairly new in the early twentieth century, and cookery writers of the period liked it precisely because it resists crystallising and made candy work more reliable for the amateur. The graded thermometer readings point the same way. Earlier books tend to say only "boil until it cracks in cold water"; this one keeps the cold-water test as a check but leads with a number, part of the domestic-science movement's push to replace inherited judgement with measurement.