A Brief Study in Popcorn
- mooreacorrigan
- Mar 13
- 2 min read
Curiosity # 2
Reposted from Substack March 12 2025
Like most people, I am a huge popcorn fan. My husband and I pop a bag at least twice a week while watching movies, but it occurred to me a few weeks ago that I had no idea how it went from a cob to my giant mixing bowl.
It turns out that I knew nothing about popcorn except that it was form of corn.
When I picture “historic popcorn,” the image that comes to mind is a group of friends watching movies in the 50s or a theatre littered with the stuff in the 80s. Perhaps, after that, I might imagine stalls at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, but that is as far back as I pictured the snack existing.
Scientists found popcorn on the cob dating back 6,700 years (!!!)1. This felt like the Tiffany Problem, where the name Tiffany was common in Medieval Europe, but it feels strangely modern2. Popcorn might also have been a staple at the “first Thanksgiving.” 3
There are two different shapes of popcorn: butterfly and mushroom. Butterfly is usually the kind used in movie theatres, whereas mushroom is more for the sweet/caramel covered snacks.
I also assumed that kernels are treated before packaging. Perhaps they are dried or dehydrated? No, the popcorn kernels are different than any other kind of corn kernels, in that they have a hard outer shell or hull that can withstand pressure as it heats up until it literally explodes into a “popped” popcorn.4
1 See photos of the ancient popcorn here. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/120119-national-popcorn-day-corn-peru-archaeology-food-science
2 For a full description of the Tiffany Problem, this article was pretty comprehensive. https://dmnes.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/the-tiffany-problem/
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