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Dessert

Pop Corn Cake and Fritters

A sweet treat made by coating popped corn with molasses, sugar, butter, and baking soda, then forming cakes or fritters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 349 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pop Corn Cake and Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Remove all hard grains from the popped corn.

Make the taffy

  1. Combine molasses, sugar, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reaches a taffy consistency.

  3. Stir in the baking soda.

Combine and shape

  1. Pour the mixture over the popped corn in a greased pan.

  2. Mix until the taffy and corn are well combined.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a floured surface.

  4. Roll out with a rolling pin, pressing hard.

  5. Cut into cakes when stiff.

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. Walnut + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Orleans molasses
Provides the dark, sticky base and sweetness that binds the popcorn into a cake.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the syrup reach a firm taffy consistency when boiled.
Baking soda
Reacts with the hot syrup to create gas bubbles that lighten its texture.
Butter
Adds fat for smoothness and a softer bite in the taffy.
Popped corn
Forms the bulk of the cake, giving it its airy, crisp structure.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture to taffy consistency. Under-boiling leaves the syrup too soft to set, so the cakes stay sticky and crumble; over-boiling makes them hard and brittle. Sugar syrup firms as its water content falls and its temperature rises, so the stopping point decides the texture.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, sugar, butter, corn):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Lima beansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, butter, corn. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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