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Dessert

Cracker Jack

A candy-coated popcorn snack made with syrup, sugar, vinegar, baking soda, and popped corn.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cracker Jack

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coating

  1. Cook the syrup, sugar, and vinegar until it cracks in cold water.

  2. Add the baking soda and stir well.

Coat and serve

  1. Pour the foamy mixture over the popped corn.

  2. Optionally, add peanuts for extra flavor.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Syrup + corntop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Corn + vinegartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Syrup
Provides sweetness and, when cooked to hard crack, a brittle candy coating.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and forms a crisp, hard candy structure as the syrup cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the hot syrup to create foam, making the coating light and brittle.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps keep the sugar from crystallizing into grainy texture.
Popped corn
Forms the base that the candy coating clings to and sets around.

The step that matters

Cook the syrup until it cracks in cold water. Sugar must reach the hard-crack stage to set crisp. Stopping early leaves the coating sticky, while overcooking scorches the sugar and makes it bitter.

“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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