Invention of Ice Cream Cones

WingerWWW · March 17, 2001, 1:13pm

Who invented ice cream cones? Is there a story behind it?
What I have heard that it was by fate that someone created a cookie cone and was selling the item as a special cookie. But the proprieter was close to an ice cream shop which served ice cream only in dishes. The problem with the ice cream store is that they ran out of dishes to serve the waiting customers. Solution was to put the ice cream on top of this cookie cone. Thusly, ice cream cones were invented.

Has anyone else heard of another story?

RealityChuck · March 17, 2001, 2:45pm

Most references say it was invented at the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904. This page indicates that that may not be strictly true, but it seems certain that the cone was popularized at the fair. The usual story was that an ice cream vendor ran out of paper cups, so took some waffles from a vendor nearby and made them into cones. Maybe that’s true, though a patent for the ice cream cone predates the fair by several months.

[note: I fixed the link. -manhattan]

[Edited by manhattan on 03-17-2001 at 03:04 PM]

JavaMaven1 · March 17, 2001, 10:45pm

I’m pulling out my trusty copy of The Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson, to see what he has to say about ice cream cones:

The ice cream cone is equally as confusing as to its origins. It seems clear that the cone (a wafer rolled to hold a scoop of ice cream) became popular at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, but there are several claims as to just who started hawking it there. Some authorities credit a Syrian immigrant named Ernest A. Hamwi with the invention, which was actually a Persian pastry, zalabia, that Hamwi rolled to hold ice cream when another concessionaire ran out of ice cream dishes.

<snip> However, it seems simplest to suppose that the cone was derived from the European traditions described under wafers. As for the immediate origin of the cones, Mariani cites Dickson (1972) whose view is that ‘the most creditable claim is that of Italo Marchiony, an Italian immigrant who once offered documentary evidence that he took a patent on an ice cream cone as of December 13, 1904, but had made them since 1896.’ Whether or not this is so, it remains true that the cones made their effective debut at the St. Louis Fair of 1904. However, Caroline Liddell and Robin Weir (1993) in a full treatment of the subject including an illustration of the Marchiony patent and of the cornets featured in Mrs. Marshall’s book, Fancy Ices (1894), suggest that the latter has a good claim, although her cornets were apparently to be eaten with a spoon and fork, rather than out of hand.