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Dessert

Popcorn Brittle

Popcorn brittle is a hard candy made by cooking sugar, butter, molasses, and popcorn to a hard crack stage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Popcorn Brittle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil brown sugar, butter, and molasses in an iron kettle until it reaches the hard crack stage (310°F).

  2. To test, drop a little syrup into ice water; it should form a hard ball that doesn't stick to your teeth.

  3. Add butter and blend well.

Add the popcorn and bake soda

  1. Stir in the popcorn until evenly coated.

  2. Remove from heat, dissolve baking soda in hot water, and stir into the mixture.

  3. When it begins to rise, pour onto an oiled or buttered marble slab or platter.

  4. Spread it thin and evenly, then let it cool before breaking into small pieces.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  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

Brown sugar
Provides the sugar base that hardens into a crisp, sweet brittle.
New orleans molasses
Adds deep flavor and color, and helps make the brittle chewy-crisp.
Baking soda
Reacts with the hot syrup to release gas, making the brittle light and airy as it rises.
Butter
Adds richness and smooths the syrup so it blends and coats evenly.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to hard crack stage. Syrup must reach about 310°F to set hard and brittle when cooled. Undercooked syrup stays sticky, while overcooked syrup can taste bitter or burnt.

“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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