Tales of our Times
By JOHN BARTLIT
New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air & Water
Popcorn Pops When People And Nature Get It Right
Popcorn is a marvel of engineering, both nature’s kind and the human way. Corn (or “maize”) has four varied forms that are native to the Americas—flint, dent, popcorn, and sweet. Popcorn dates back some 5,000 years. The Mayans knew about popcorn, but the oldest remains of popcorn came to be found in the “Bat Cave” in west central New Mexico in the late 1940s.
The secrets behind popcorn’s glorious popping are stored in its little world of synergy. The forces and the stuff for popping await in a hard hull that encloses about 14 percent moisture and a hard carbohydrate, all of which can work together to pop. If heated right, the hull splits open when the temperature inside approaches 347 °F and the steam pressure inside is near 135 psi.
But success is not so simple. If the hull heats too quickly, the food contents do not have time to “melt” like gelatin. If reaching the popping pressure takes too long, too much pressure leaks away at the stem end of the hull. Either way, the kernel never yields its tasty white puffs. In old popcorn jargon, any nubbin with this sad ending is called an “old maid.”
Popcorn burst into the modern world when two inventions debuted at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. Popcorn got a boost when Charles Cretors of Chicago trundled his mobile corn popper along the Fair’s Midway, deploying hot buttered whiffs on the summer air. Cretors’ cart had a small engine that burned gasoline to heat the kettle of corn and make steam to drive the popcorn stirrer.
Popcorn’s other boom at the 1893 Fair was the advance of Cracker Jack by the Rueckheim brothers.
Courtesy/John Bartlit
Thereafter, popcorn took hold in big league baseball, through hard times of the Great Depression, and in movie theaters. Yet, few foresaw the stunning rise of sales that came during the Depression. Popcorn at 5 or 10 cents a bag was one of the few luxuries that stressed families could afford. In those same years, popcorn connected to the movies. At first, mobile carts sold their product outdoors to moviegoers on their way in, until theaters took up the lucrative business for themselves. Film fans are still greeted at the movies by the enticing aroma that ties to an exact chemical the popcorn makes, 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline.
Meanwhile, Cracker Jack made its way into baseball lore. Before the bottom half of the seventh inning, a stadium organ will start off. No matter what the score is, home team fans of all strains sing out for the pure fun of it: “Take me out to the ball game, Take me out with the crowd. Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack, I don’t care if I never get back….”
Some of life’s simplest wonders are the fruits of astonishing journeys. Nature’s ways take millennia, which include prolonged product tests and making species. Humans invent faster, but afford less time for boundless testing.
