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Dessert

Pop Corn and Corn-balls

A treat made by popping corn and forming the popped kernels into sweet balls using a glucose-sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Pop Corn and Corn-balls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 235°F (113°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Pop the corn

  1. Pop the corn in a quart-size popper using 2 oz. of corn or in a bushel popper using 2½ lbs. of corn.

  2. Shake continuously over a gas fire to prevent burning.

  3. Once popped, place the corn in a large bowl.

Make the syrup and coat

  1. In a pot, boil 2 quarts of water, 3 lbs. of glucose, and 1 lb. of sugar until it reaches 235°F (113°C).

  2. Remove from heat and pour the syrup over the popped corn, stirring from the rim to the center.

  3. For coconut corn-balls, sprinkle coconut over the corn before adding syrup.

  4. For red corn-balls, add a few drops of brilliant rose to the syrup before mixing.

Form the balls

  1. Once cool enough, press the mixture into balls with your hands.

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. Corn + coconuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Coconut + rosetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + coconuttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Corn + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Glucose
Keeps the syrup from crystallising and helps the coating stay soft and binding.
Sugar
Sweetens the coating and, cooked to temperature, helps it set firm as it cools.
Shelled corn
Forms the popped base that the syrup coats and holds together as balls.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to 235°F (113°C). Syrup taken too far becomes hard and brittle, while syrup left short of temperature stays sticky and will not hold the balls together. Hitting the target sets the texture.

Swap the coconut

The recipe marks coconut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, sugar, rose):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Coconutthe original
  4. Limefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar, rose. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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