Why it works: Sugar and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,168 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Sugar Corn
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Boil sugar with enough water until it reaches 235°F (113°C).
Coat the corn
Place popped corn in a large bowl.
Pour half of the syrup over the corn and stir from the rim to the center to coat each piece.
Once coated, add the remaining syrup and stir again.
Sprinkle ½ lb of sugar over the coated corn to help separate the pieces.
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.
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Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together7,168 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Forms the syrup that coats each piece and, once cooled, the sweet crisp shell.
- Popped corn
- Provides the crunchy base that the sugar syrup clings to and hardens around.
The step that matters
Cooking the syrup to 235°F (113°C). The syrup's final temperature sets how hard the coating becomes when cool. Too little cooking leaves a sticky coating, while too much cooking can make it brittle or burnt, so the thermometer reading matters.
“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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