Skip to main content
Dessert

Popcorn Balls

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Molasses and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Popcorn Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Combine molasses, brown sugar, vinegar, and butter in a large kettle.

  2. Cook the mixture until it reaches a soft ball stage.

Prepare the corn

  1. Pop enough corn to make 4 quarts when popped.

  2. Salt the corn and sift it through your fingers to remove hard kernels and loose salt.

Form the balls

  1. Stir the popped corn into the kettle with the candy mixture until well coated.

  2. Heap the mixture onto buttered plates and cut into blocks or mold 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. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides the dark color, deep flavor, and sticky body that binds the corn.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the candy set firm as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds a little acidity that helps keep the sugar syrup smooth.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a softer, less brittle coating.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture to the soft ball stage. Cooking the syrup to the right temperature controls how much water remains. Too little cooking leaves a sticky mass that will not hold its shape, while overcooking makes the coating 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.

More popcorn balls recipes

Molasses 4Chocolate 3 See all 62 →

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipes