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To Sugar Corn

A sweet treat made by coating popped corn with a butter and sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,345 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

To Sugar Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a kettle, combine butter, water, and sugar.

  2. Boil until the mixture is ready to candy.

Coat the popcorn

  1. Add popped corn and stir briskly.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool.

  3. Once cool, each grain will be coated with sugar.

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

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

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Forms the candy coating that hardens into a crisp, sweet shell on each kernel.
Butter
Adds richness and helps keep the cooked sugar syrup smooth and glossy.
Popped corn
Provides the light, crunchy base that the sugar syrup clings to and hardens around.

The step that matters

Boiling until ready to candy. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration. Too little cooking leaves the coating sticky, while too much can turn it hard or burnt. Stirring briskly after adding the corn helps distribute the syrup evenly before it cools.

“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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