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Dessert

Nut and Popcorn Candy

A sweet treat made by coating popped corn and hickory nuts in syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and syrup are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,678 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Nut and Popcorn Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, boil the New Orleans syrup until it threads from the spoon.

  2. Dissolve a speck of baking soda in hot water and stir it into the syrup.

Coat the corn

  1. Add the hickory nut meats and then the popped corn to the syrup.

  2. Stir until the sugar is evenly distributed over the corn.

  3. Remove from heat and stir until it cools slightly to keep the kernels separated and coated.

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 + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Corn + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Syrup + meattop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together139 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

New orleans syrup
Cooked to thread stage, it forms the sweet, sticky coating that binds the popcorn.
Baking soda
A tiny amount reacts with the hot syrup to lighten its texture and make it less dense.
Popped corn
Forms the bulk of the candy, carrying the syrup coating in every bite.
Hickory nut meats
Add crunch and a rich, nutty flavor throughout the candy.

The step that matters

Stirring the syrup onto the corn as it cools. Stirring while the coating is still warm but slightly cooled keeps the kernels separated and evenly coated. If it cools too much first, the syrup hardens and clumps the popcorn together.

“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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