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Dessert

Christmas Pop-corn Balls

A festive treat made by coating popped corn with boiled molasses and sugar, then forming into balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Christmas Pop-corn Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pop the corn over a clear fire.

  2. Boil the molasses and sugar together until a few drops harden in cold water.

  3. Butter your hands.

Form the balls

  1. Quickly pour the mixture over the popped corn.

  2. Mix the corn well.

  3. Mold it 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. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  3. Corn + molassestop 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

Popped corn
Forms the bulk of each ball and gives the light, crunchy texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a sticky quality that binds the corn together.
Sugar
Hardens into a syrup with the molasses that coats the corn and sets as the balls cool.

The step that matters

Boiling the molasses and sugar. The syrup must reach the hard-crack stage, shown by drops hardening in cold water. Too little cooking leaves a sticky mixture that will not hold its shape; too much makes it brittle and hard to mold.

“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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