I don’t know anyone who hasn’t tried a popcorn in their life, or tostones, as they are also called, and whose peak time to taste them in the past was All Saints’ Day or All Souls’ Day.
Now it is unforgivable to go to the cinema anywhere in the world and not provide yourself with a good box full of popcorn to enjoy while watching a movie; or make them at home for the same purpose. In the past they were made in a frying pan with a little sunflower oil and covering them with a lid that had to be tightened tightly while moving the pan so that they did not come out and the heat would cause the grains to burst.
Freshly made, you can put sugar or salt, to taste, and thus delight young and old alike.
But modernity has also reached this very natural product and we only have to put the bags greased inside with butter in the microwave, and in a few minutes we have the popcorn prepared.
But how did this discovery come about, which some have described as the metamorphosis that a worm undergoes when it becomes a butterfly?
The first traces of popcorn date back to more than six thousand years ago in the Bat Cave in Mexico and also in different areas of Peru, where it was an essential part of the diet of these ancient civilizations. In addition to serving as food, popcorn was also very important in the religious ceremonies of the Mexican Aztecs and the celebrations and festivals of pre-Columbian Colombia, both as food and to make necklaces and headdresses.
With the landing of Christopher Columbus on that continent and the subsequent colonization of Latin America, Westerners began to have contact with popcorn. Christopher Columbus He noticed that the natives made hats and bodices from popcorn, which they sold to sailors. Their use as crafts continues today.
Abate Juan Ignacio Molina, in 1788 wrote that corn came out:
“a quite tasty drink, and a very useful flour, first grinding it and toasting it in a sand bath: although for this operation they prefer another species of corn called Caragua, which, although much smaller in all its parts, swells in such a way in the sand bath, which acquires a much larger volume than the others, and produces a lighter and whiter flour, which, dissolved in fresh or hot water with a little sugar, forms the two drinks called Ulpoand Chercan.
In the north of the American continent, French settlers documented that the Iroquois Indians popped corn in hot clay bowls, with which they later made beer and soups. It was from these contacts between the indigenous people and the colonizers that popcorn became very popular in Western cultures and became part of the diet of the thousands of settlers who arrived in America during the different waves of migration that left from the different nations of the old world.
The popularization and mass consumption of popcorn came thanks to the ingenuity of the inventor Charles Cretors, who in 1885 devised a machine that, using hot air, caused the uniform explosion of corn grains. And as it could not be otherwise, once the residents of the towns and cities, through which Cretors passed with his new popcorn machine to make it known, tried the delicious delicacy, they did not want to continue living without it.
This is how, thanks to this new machine, popcorn became fashionable and began to be consumed as delicious entertainment at fairs and during shows and film screenings.
From that moment until today, the passion for popcorn has not stopped growing throughout the world and has become one of the healthiest, tastiest, most economical and fun snacks on the market.
Throughout the world there are plenty of ways to refer to our unmistakable popcorn and depending on where you are, they are known with such curious names as: Crispetes, alborotos, rositas de corn, gallitos, poporopos, poscon, poporochos, pochoclos, pururú, pop, popcorn, canchita, campo perlita, canguil, pororó, cotufas, chivitas , corn goats, tote corn, pipocas, rosettes, roses, threads, tostones, cocaleca, etc.
Originally published at LaDamadeElche.com
