I was eating popcorn tonight and thinking about how old popcorn is and found myself wondering how old the concept of buttered popcorn is. I've found sources online about popcorn in Pre-columbian America and sources about milk in Pre-columbian America, but nothing about butter specifically.
Is it possible that in Pre-columbian America, people not only were enjoying popcorn, but specifically buttered popcorn?
"sources about milk in Pre-columbian America"
I would be very interested to hear about these sources, ideally if they are academic. I tried googling "Pre-Columbian milk" and got some internet articles sourcing info from Reddit posts about Andean peoples (maybe) using llama milk, and that's about it.
In terms of Pre-Columbian peoples who would have consumed corn (so mostly Mesoamerica, and Eastern North America especially after 900), they did not have domesticated animals that would have produced milk in any significant, useful quantities, if at all.