Chicago's love affair with popcorn goes back 150 years
CHICAGO >> “Are the Chicago people fond of popcorn?” asked a Tribune reporter in an article from Dec. 2, 1883.
A food vendor replied emphatically: “Fond of it? Well, I should rather say so. Who can help but be fond of fresh corn nicely popped, sugared, salted, or buttered to suit the taste? Yes sir, they are decidedly.”
Since at least the 1870s, Chicago has been a hotbed of popcorn innovation. Part of that has to do with Chicago's role as a transportation hub for grain in the Midwest. But the entrepreneurial spirit of its citizens certainly helped.
Not everyone at the Tribune was thrilled about the explosion in the popcorn business. On April 5, 1874, the paper noted that commercial popcorn makers have seen “business rapidly attaining gigantic proportions.” But the unnamed reporter lamented that the “romance of popcorn has departed; it is all a matter of business now.” Instead, he apparently preferred it when it was “once manufactured by every Eastern fireside, when winter came to sadden the year.”
While some businessmen did sell popcorn in bags, one of the most popular options was “solidified pop-corn,” which was shaped into either a ball or a brick. On July 8, 1883, an unnamed reporter wrote in remarkable detail about visiting two Chicago popcorn factories to better understand the process.
If readers had never encountered the snack before, he had it covered with details of the “beautiful metamorphosis” as corn “transformed into something which resembles nothing so much as a white blossom …”
He also wrote that after the sugar had been added, one place added a dye made of cochineal, a dried red insect, to give the popcorn a “carmine tint.” The reporter wondered if the dye was harmful. “No,” said the proprietor, “it is quite harmless; and then, you see, it gives the popcorn a sort of Fourth-ofJuly look.”
The 1883 article also quoted one of the popcorn factory owners as saying popcorn balls were going out of fashion. That turned out to be wildly premature. A decade later, in 1896, the Tribune wrote about a popcorn vendor in Lincoln Park who served “old-fashioned balls of white kernels sprinkled with clean sugar.” Though the reporter claimed “his figure is as familiar to the people of the North Side as the Grant statue,” he also didn't bother to find out the vendor's real name. “Nobody knows his name, but the fat policeman who has been on the same corner for nearly a dozen years says everybody calls him `Popcorn John.'”
Recipes for popcorn balls continued to be printed well into the 20th century. A bare-bones recipe appears in the paper Nov. 6, 1915. On July 6, 1930, a reader with the initials C.G.P. wrote in that she had made some money by selling popcorn balls around the neighborhood. “The venture proved a success … and I could have sold double the amount prepared daily.” A recipe for cinnamon popcorn balls shows up on Jan. 4, 1935, while an Oct. 28, 1966, recipe proves popcorn balls were still fairly popular eight decades after the ill-fated prediction of their demise.
Another innovation in the popcorn arts was also taking place during the end of the 19th century. On March 8, 1896, the Tribune reported that “Louis Rueckheim, a Chicago candy manufacturer, recently hit upon a very bright, new idea in confections.”