Popcorn (also called popped corn, popcorns, or pop-corn) is a variety of corn kernel which expands and puffs up when heated. The term also refers to the snack food produced by the expansion. It is one of the oldest snacks, with evidence of popcorn dating back thousands of years in the Americas. It is commonly eaten salted, buttered, sweetened, or with artificial flavorings. A popcorn kernel's strong hull contains the seed's hard, starchy shell endosperm with 14–20% moisture, which turns to steam as the kernel is heated. Pressure from the steam continues to build until the hull ruptures, allowing the kernel to forcefully expand, to 20 to 50 times its original size, and then cool. Some strains of corn (taxonomized as Zea mays) are cultivated specifically as popping corns. The Zea mays variety everta, a special kind of flint corn, is the most common of these. Popcorn is one of six major types of corn, alongside dent corn, flint corn, pod corn, flour corn, and sweet corn.
History Corn was domesticated about 9,000 years ago, in what is now the Balsas River Valley of Central Mexico. Archaeologists discovered that people have known about popcorn for millennia. Fossil evidence from Peru suggests that corn was present there as early as 4,700 BCE, and popped there over 1,000 years ago. Between 2007 and 2011, evidence as early as 4,700 BCE for popping corn was discovered as macrofossil cobs at the Paredones and Huaca Prieta archaeological sites on the northern coast of Peru. Corn cultivation was present in Amazon basin farming practices as evidenced by cultivation of corn in the Amazon basin 6,000 years ago In 1948 and 1950, evidence as early as 3600 BCE for popping corn as ears of popcorn were discovered by Harvard anthropology graduate student Herbert W. Dick and Harvard botany graduate student Claude Earle Smith, Junior (1922–1987), in a complex of rock shelters, dubbed the "Bat Cave", in Catron County, west-central New Mexico, and attributed to the Ancestral Puebloan peoples, who maintained trade networks with peoples in tropical Mexico. Through the 19th century, popping of the kernels was achieved by hand, on stove tops over flame. Kernels were sold on the East Coast of the United States under names such as Pearls or Nonpareil. The term popped corn first appeared in John Russell Bartlett's 1848 Dictionary of Americanisms. Popcorn is an ingredient in Cracker Jack and, in the early years of the product, it was popped by hand.
Popcorn's accessibility increased rapidly in the 1890s with Charles Cretors' invention of the popcorn maker. Cretors, a Chicago candy store owner, had created a number of steam-powered machines for roasting nuts and applied the technology to the corn kernels.
By the turn of the century, Cretors had created and deployed street carts equipped with steam-powered popcorn makers. During the Great Depression, popcorn was fairly inexpensive at 5–10 cents a bag and became popular. Thus, while other businesses failed, the popcorn business thrived and became a source of income for many struggling farmers and entrepreneurs, including the Redenbacher family, namesake of the Orville Redenbacher's popcorn brand. During World War II, sugar rations diminished candy production, and Americans compensated by eating three times as much popcorn as they had before. The snack was popular at theaters, much to the initial displeasure of many of the theater owners, who thought it distracted from the films. Their minds eventually changed, however, and in 1938 a Midwestern theater owner named Glen W. Dickinson Sr. installed popcorn machines in the lobbies of his Dickinson theaters. Popcorn was more profitable than theater tickets, and at the suggestion of his production consultant, R. Ray Aden, Dickinson purchased popcorn farms and was able to keep ticket prices down. The venture was a success, and popcorn soon spread. The rise of television in the 1940s brought lower popcorn consumption as theater attendance fell. The Popcorn Institute, a trade association of popcorn processors, promoted popcorn consumption at home, bringing it back to previous levels. In 1970, Orville Redenbacher's namesake brand of popcorn was launched. In 1981, General Mills received the first patent for a microwave oven popcorn bag; popcorn consumption saw an increase. At least six localities (all in the Midwestern United States) claim to be the "Popcorn Capital of the World;": Ridgway, Illinois; Valparaiso, Indiana; Van Buren, Indiana; Schaller, Iowa; Marion, Ohio; and North Loup, Nebraska. According to the USDA, specific corn for popcorn is grown mostly in Nebraska and Indiana, and increasingly in Texas. As the result of an elementary school project, popcorn became the official state snack food of Illinois.
Popping mechanism Each kernel of popcorn contains moisture and oil. Unlike most other grains, the outer hull of the popcorn kernel is strong and impervious to moisture, and the starch inside consists almost entirely of a hard type.
As the oil and water in the kernel are heated, they turn into steam. Under these conditions, the starch inside the kernel gelatinizes and softens. The steam pressure increases until the breaking point of the hull is reached: a pressure of approximately 930 kPa (135 psi) and a temperature of 180 °C (356 °F). The hull ruptures, causing a sudden drop in pressure inside the kernel and a corresponding rapid expansion of the steam, which expands the starch and proteins of the endosperm into an airy foam. As the foam rapidly cools, the starch and protein polymers set into the familiar crispy puff. Special varieties are grown to improve popping yield. Though the kernels of some other types will pop, the cultivated strain for popcorn is Zea mays everta, which is a variety of flint corn.
Cooking methods
Popcorn can be cooked with butter or oil. Although small quantities can be popped in a stove-top kettle or pot in a home kitchen, commercial sale employs specially designed popcorn machines, which were invented in Chicago, Illinois, by Charles Cretors in 1885. Cretors introduced his invention at the Columbian Exposition in 1893. At that fair, F.W. Rueckheim introduced a molasses-flavored "Candied Popcorn", the first caramel corn; his brother, Louis Ruekheim, slightly altered the recipe and introduced it as Cracker Jack in 1896.
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