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Dessert

Pop Corn Balls

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pop Corn Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine molasses, sugar, and butter.

  2. Boil the mixture until it hardens when dropped in cold water.

Form the balls

  1. Remove from heat and quickly stir in the popped corn.

  2. Mould the mixture 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 + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  5. Molasses + corntop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together644 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, rich flavor, and sticky body that binds the corn.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the syrup harden as it cools.
Popped corn
Forms the bulk of the balls, held together by the cooked syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to the hard-crack stage. If the syrup is undercooked it stays too soft and the balls will not hold their shape. If overcooked it becomes brittle and may shatter or taste bitter. Testing by dropping a little into cold water shows when the sugar has reached the right concentration to set firm.

“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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