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Pop Corn Balls

A sweet treat made by coating popped corn with a sugar-molasses syrup and forming it into balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Pop Corn Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar, molasses, and glucose (or cream of tartar) until the syrup can form a hair when dropped from a spoon.

Coat and shape

  1. Pour the syrup in a stream over the popped corn while stirring continuously.

  2. Wet your hands slightly and press the mixture into balls.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,408 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cream + corntop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves into the syrup and sets firm as it cools, giving the balls their sweetness and structure.
Molasses
Adds depth, color, and a chewy, sticky texture to the coating.
Glucose
Keeps the syrup from crystallizing, so the coating stays smooth and glossy.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to the hair stage. Cooking the syrup to the hair stage drives off enough water for it to set firm and hold the balls together. Undercooked syrup stays sticky and won't hold its shape, while overcooked syrup turns hard and brittle.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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