Your Daily Facts about Ice Cream Cones
Today we were at the grocery store and we bought some waffle cones to scoop ice cream into at home. Plus a box of ice cream cones (triple chocolate, my favorite). Got to have, since it is now summer, plenty of ice cream on hand for the grandkids who stop by and expect to have a cone ready.
For over a century, Americans have been enjoying ice cream in an edible cone. Whether it’s a waffle cone, a sugar cone, a wafer cone or a cake cup doesn’t matter. Just add a double scoop of your favorite ice cream and lick to your hearts content.
Paper, glass and metal cones, cups, and dishes were used during the 19th century in France, Germany, and Britain for eating ice cream. Many cooking books, some as early as 1770, according to researchers mention pastry and creams in the same recipes. But there is no evidence that they are describing the ice cream cone that we know today. Ice cream was an expensive desert that only the wealthiest could enjoy. They certainly would not be eating anything with their hands. The same holds true for the 1807 painting that shows a women eating from what appears to be a cone.
In the late 1800′s and early 1900′s as ice cream became less expensive and more popular, they began to be sold by street vendors. Most ice cream from vendors was sold in serving glasses called “penny licks” (because you’d lick the ice cream from the glass, and it cost a penny to do so). There was a major problem with sanitation (or the lack thereof), and another problem was that many people would accidentally break the glasses, or not so accidentally walk off with them.
Two enterprising ice cream salesmen independently invented and patented edible containers for ice cream. In 1896 Italo Marchiony was a successful ice cream salesman with over 40 push-cart vendors selling his edible containers filled with ice cream on the streets of New York City. He obtained a patent for a machine to make the containers in 1903. At about the same time an ice cream merchant in Manchester, England named Antonio Valvona obtained a U.S. Patent (1902) for a machine for producing edible biscuit cups. Examination of the patent drawings show that both inventions were for edible ice cream cups with flat bottoms and tapered sides.
In 1904 St. Louis, Missouri was the place to be. That year three major events plus the invention of the ice cream cone took place. They hosted the 1904 World’s Fair, the centennial of the Louisiana land purchase from the French (one year late) with a Louisiana Purchase Exposition and the 2004 Olympics.
According to most accounts there were more than 50 ice cream vendors and more than a dozen waffle stands selling their wares at these events. With all these events running concurrently and the number of vendors involved selling ice cream and waffles, finding the real inventor of the ice cream cone had to end in controversy.
Syrian immigrant Ernest Hamwi rolled up some of his “zalabia” (a waffle-like pastry) from his pastry cart into cones and gave them to Arnold Fornachou, who had run out of paper dishes to serve his ice cream. Word spread quickly though the Fair and many other vendors began selling ice cream in waffle cones. These edible ice cream cones became so popular that everyone wanted to take credit for there invention and many did.
After the fair, Hamwi joined with J. P. Heckle and helped him develop and open the Cornucopia Waffle Company. Ernest traveled throughout the United State introducing the World’s Fair Cornucopia as a new way of eating ice cream. In 1910, Hamwi opened the Missouri Cone Company and called his container, the ice cream cone, to avoid a conflict with Cornucopia.
In 1920 Ernest Hamwi was issued a patent for a pastry cone making machine. His Missouri Cone Company later became the Western Cone Company as the market for ice cream popularity spread and the company grew.
In its purest form an ice cream cone should be of conical shape. The first true edible conical shaped cone for serving ice cream was created at the St. Louis Worlds Fair by Ernest Hamwi in 1904. The cone obviously gained popularity across the United States because by 1924 Americans were consuming upwards of 245 million cones per year.