Name: Sugared Popcorn
Ingredients: popcorn; sugar; water; granulated sugar; pink food coloring (optional)

Sugared Popcorn

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 221°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the syrup

In a saucepan, combine sugar and water and cook until it reaches a soft ball stage (about 221°F or 105°C).
If desired, add pink food coloring to the syrup for pink popcorn.
Set the syrup near the popcorn.

Coat the popcorn

Place the popcorn in a clean kettle.
Pour the syrup over the popcorn and stir well.
While stirring, have a helper sprinkle granulated sugar over the popcorn.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar: Cooked with water to form the syrup that coats and sweetens the popcorn.
Granulated sugar: Sprinkled over the wet syrup-coated popcorn to add a crisp, sweet, sparkling coating.
Popcorn: Forms the base that the syrup and sugar cling to.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to soft ball stage. Sugar syrup must reach the correct concentration to set into a coating. Too little cooking leaves it sticky and wet; too much makes it hard and brittle. A thermometer reading near 221°F (105°C) helps hit the target.

“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.