Back in 1630, Quadequine, brother of Massasoit, who was the leader of the Wampanoag tribe, introduced popcorn to the English colonists.
He offered the snack of the future and movie theater staple as a token of goodwill during peace negotiations. The colonists called it popped corn, parching corn, or rice corn, and it was popped on top of heated stones or by placing the kernels, or cobs, into the hot embers of a fire.
The Indians did not discover popping corn. People had been consuming it since 300 B.C. In 1948 and 1950, ears of popcorn believed to be 4,000 years old were discovered in the Bat Caves of west central New Mexico.
In 1650, the Spaniard Cobo said of the Peruvian Indians, “They toast a certain kind of corn until it bursts. They call it pisancalla, and they use it as a confection.”
The popularity of popcorn has rarely waned, even during the Depression, when its relatively inexpensive cost, at 5 or 10 cents a bag, made it one of the few luxuries even the down-and-out could afford.
Americans consume more than 17.3 billion quarts of popcorn each year.
No comments:
Post a Comment