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How to Pop Corn PUT about half a cup of corn in popper, and shake over a moderate fire until kernels begin to pop. If gas is used, turn it very low, that corn may become uniformly heated through. Shake rapidly as soon as kernels begin to pop, and remove from fire before they begin to burn.
Half a cup of popcorn should yield one and one half quarts popped corn. For salted popped corn, sprinkle generously with salt.
Buttered Popcorn 4 tablespoons butter 2 quarts popped corn Salt Melt butter in large saucepan, add corn, and stir until every kernel is coated. Sprinkle with salt and serve at once.
Two short procedures from the era of the wire basket popper held over a coal range or gas burner. The method transfers to a heavy pot with almost no change.
- The popperThe book says only "popper"; poppers of the period were typically long-handled wire baskets shaken over the flame. A heavy 4-quart pot with a lid works the same way: a thin film of oil, the corn in a single layer, medium heat, and constant motion.
- "A moderate fire"Medium heat, and the instruction to turn gas very low at the start is sound. Corn pops when the moisture inside each kernel flashes to steam, so the kernels need to heat evenly; too fierce a flame scorches the hulls before the centres are hot.
- Butter, not oil, for poppingThe original pops dry in a basket, then dresses with butter afterward. Keep that order. Butter's milk solids burn well below popping temperature, so if you pop in a pot use a neutral oil and add the butter at the end as written.
- YieldModern hybrid popcorn expands considerably more than the 1 1/2 quarts per half cup stated here, so half a cup will comfortably cover the two quarts the buttered popcorn recipe calls for. Two quarts of popped corn serves two or three.
- SaltFine salt clings; coarse crystals fall to the bottom of the bowl. Salting into the melted butter before it meets the corn distributes it better than sprinkling over the top.
- Unpopped kernelsCorn that has dried out will not pop, since it is the moisture sealed in the kernel that drives the pop. If a batch leaves many hard kernels behind, old dry stock is one likely cause, insufficient heat another; store popcorn sealed at room temperature, not in the refrigerator.
- Serve at onceMeant literally. Buttered corn softens fairly quickly as the moisture in the butter works into the starch. Plain popped corn holds better in a tin.
Popped corn was an American commonplace long before it was a candy-shop item; the varieties that pop share the hard endosperm of flint corn but are usually classed separately, and by the late nineteenth century wire poppers are often said to have been common hearth and stove equipment in ordinary households. That a candy book opens its popcorn chapter by explaining how to pop the corn at all says something about the audience: these were kitchens where the raw material came by the pound from a grocer and the confection began several steps earlier than it does now. The chapter heading promises candies, and the popped corn here is the foundation for what comes after, with buttered and salted corn offered first as the plainest use. Caramel-coated popcorn had become a commercial product by the 1890s, which is likely why a book of this kind felt obliged to teach the home version.