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Pop Corn Balls

Popcorn balls are sweet confections made by coating popped corn with a molasses-sugar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

Pop Corn Balls

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil molasses, sugar, and cream of tartar until brittle.

  2. Add baking soda and butter to the mixture.

Prepare the corn

  1. Sort out all hard kernels from the popped corn.

Coat and shape

  1. Pour the boiling mixture over the corn and stir well.

  2. Form the mixture into balls immediately.

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. Cream + buttertop 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. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Corn + buttertop 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

Popped corn
Forms the bulk and crunchy structure of each ball.
Molasses
Adds deep sweetness, flavor, and color to the coating.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the syrup set firm as it cools.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps keep the sugar syrup smooth rather than grainy.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic syrup to lighten its texture and make it less dense.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the coating and helps the balls hold a smooth finish.

The step that matters

Forming the balls immediately. Hot sugar syrup cools and hardens quickly, so it becomes stiff and hard to shape within moments. Working while the mixture is still warm lets the coating bind the corn into firm, even balls.

“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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