Knott's pop-corn book / Dedicated to the health the happiness the wealth of all people

by Unknown

Hot air rises and cold air descends; you know that, but did you ever consider that it has a lot to do with your results in making pop-corn?

You know that popped corn is light and fluffy and air passes through the collection of kernels easily. Think of how hot a kernel must be to pop and yet you know that it is hardly any time at all before the kernel is cold. The air surrounding the kernel is heated by the hot kernel: that air rises and is replaced by cooler air which in turn extracts the heat from the kernel and so the process continues with speed until the kernel is the same temperature as the air.

You have often used the pouring of a liquid to more rapidly cool it. You have lifted spoonful after spoonful of coffee letting it run off the spoon to cool it. Did it ever occur to you that the pouring of the hot, boiling syrup onto the pop-corn in a mixing tank is a cooling process? Because of hot air ascending and cool air descending, that candy that you would thus pour onto the pop-corn will cool at a most rapid rate while you are getting the candy kettle out of the way and your paddle down into the batch to mix the corn and candy. The doing away with this pouring of the candy is necessary to the production of the best goods. You can eliminate it by cooking the candy in a deep kettle and pouring the pop-corn into that kettle on top of the candy and mixing the batch in that kettle.

To coat a kernel of pop-corn with candy is not only for the purpose of tickling the sense of taste, but by the use of that thin covering of candy you keep the dampness out of the kernel. To be most effective, the coating must completely enclose each kernel and yet for the confection to be of the most delicate and brittle texture you must have but the least film of a coating of candy covering each kernel and every kernel the same as every other. To get the best results, you must use the one best method of manufacture.

If without any time passing, that is, instantaneously, you could distribute the candy at the instant it reached the point to which you boil it, the candy then being at its most liquid state, if you could distribute the candy thus instantly over the kernels, you would have the ideal thin coating of candy over each kernel of pop-corn. You would have the most delicious piece of confection you ever set your teeth into.

When mixing by hand, one-half of the time is used in the down stroke of the paddle, which, of course, is necessary before you can make the up stroke, or lift the paddle to mix the corn. Yet, of course, that uses valuable time during which the batch is cooling. A machine so constructed as to have a rotating paddle always under the corn to lift the corn up the sides of the kettle and guiding it to fall down the center of the kettle, such a machine uses no time in return strokes and mixes the batch almost instantaneously.

At this point in our consideration of the subject, let us see what we have learned.

It is best to mix the candy and pop-corn in the way that will be the quickest, the quickest way being to boil the candy in a deep kettle and mix the batch in that same kettle by the use of a pop-corn mixing machine.