We link to stories about entrepreneurial conservation, most often involving wilderness, whose tangible value is straightforward. Other times it is about art, or language; these forms of cultural patrimony are more intangible in value–not less obviously of value, but less tangibly so.

It should not diminish the concept of patrimony, nor the tangible/intangible divide, to talk about heritage popcorn, as trivial as that might at first sound. In the interest of tangible patrimony that has intangible value embedded into it, we appreciate this New York Times Dining & Wine section offering, an unexpected small pleasure:

Heirloom Popcorn Helps a Snack Reinvent Itself

By KIM SEVERSON

Heirloom varieties you pop yourself deliver more flavor than those store-bought bags.

SHELLSBURG, Iowa — Corn confronts you at every turn in Iowa. It blurs past the car window for hours. Stop for gas and you’re likely to find a patch growing out back.

Much of it will fuel cars, feed cattle and sweeten food. But a half-hour’s drive from Cedar Rapids, in front of Gene and Lynn Mealhow’s sturdy farmhouse, ears of corn no bigger than a child’s hand grow from seeds the family can trace back to the 1850s. The small, pearly flint corn has never been genetically modified or hybridized. Its only purpose is to pop into small, crisp puffs that taste of pure toasted corn.

Mr. Mealhow, 59, a soil expert who still looks very much like the hippie drummer he once was, spent years driving around trying to sell his precious popcorn. Now, his Tiny but Mighty brand is on the shelves of Whole Foods. For a family like his, that’s akin to winning the lottery.

The Mealhows are part of a popcorn revival, the latest reinvention of an enduring American snack that has been retooled every few generations to fit shifts in technology and culinary fashion.

With the invention of steam-powered poppers and caramel-coated Cracker Jack in the late 1800s, popcorn moved from farm-family snack to cultural novelty. It buoyed the movie industry in the Great Depression. Products like Jiffy Pop, which offered pan, oil and corn in one magical purchase, brought popcorn back to the kitchen in the 1960s. They, in turn, were bigfooted by the microwave oven in the ’80s.

Now, in an era of farmers’ markets and a do-it-yourself ethos, older popcorn varieties with names like Dakota Black, Tom Thumb and Lady Finger are being popped on the stove in coconut and olive oils, enhanced with just a kiss of fresh butter and fine salt or fortified with rosemary, wasabi powder or nothing at all.

“If you look at craft beers, you’ll see that the same thing happened,” said Glenn Roberts, who founded Anson Mills, in South Carolina, to preserve old strains of rice and other grains. “People are awakening their palates to something that has more flavor and complexity.”

Mr. Roberts sells almost 400 pounds of Appalachian heirloom sweet flint popping corn a week. Chefs are his biggest customers, drawn in part by his corn’s sweet, slightly floral taste. But home cooks, too, are rediscovering the joys of making popcorn on the stove (“a lost art,” Lynn Mealhow calls it) and updating it with flavors like garam masala or sriracha — treating it, in effect, like any other premium ingredient.

“Popcorn is a product that comes from a seed that you can make in your own home and customize,” said Melissa Abbott, the vice president of culinary insights for the Hartman Group, a market research company in Bellevue, Wash. “There’s a real D.I.Y. feel to it.”

Still, for a nation that knows the pleasure buried in a tub of movie-house popcorn laced with fake butter, or the instant gratification inside a bag hot from the office microwave, the older popcorns are not always easy to love. They cost more, pop up smaller and leave more unpopped kernels than their highly bred commercial brothers…

Popcorn Recipes: Tips for Popping Heirloom Corn Varieties

Read the whole article here.