Thursday, 15 July 2010

• The History of the Ice-Cream Cone

  
  
  I had heard this history in passing once, and I'm surprised it's taken me this long to write about it on this blog - it's right up there with pizza for me as one of my favorite food histories ever!  The first time I ever heard it, I was on a ski lift overlooking a Belgian waffle stand (and no...I wasn't in Belgium.  God bless the USA). 
  
  I'll cover a few important pre-history facts before launching into the cool part:
  
  Throughout the late 1700s, eating "iced cream puddings" or "iced puddings" became very popular.  Wafers were consumed after the consumption of these puddings, mainly because these puddings were desserts (and thus served after a meal) and wafers were thought of as being digestive aids (and were served as the very last course of any meal).
  
  So the tastes of wafers and iced puddings began to mingle.  Although wafer "cornucopias" were used to decorate iced pudding dishes throughout the late 1700s, they were not yet associated with consumption of the pudding while being in this particular shape.
  
  Iced puddings continued to be popular throughout the 1800s, but the only two found mentions of anything similar to ice cream cones were in relatively obscure recipes in mainstream cookbooks.  One was in Agnes B. Marshall's Mrs. A.B. Marshall's Cookery Book in 1888, in a recipe for almond-encrusted cornets wherein she recommends, as a side-note, filling them with cream (or "water-ice or set custard of fruits, and served for a dinner, luncheon, or summer dish.")
  
  The other was in Chef Charles Ranhofer's (of Delmonico's Restaurant in NYC) cookbook, The Epicurean: A Complete Treatise of Analytical and Practical Studies on the Culinary Art, in 1894.  He had a recipe for "Rolled-Waffle Cornets", within which he recommended putting flavored whipped cream.
  
  Italian immigrants in London are speculated to possibly have sold ice cream in their own cones, but there is not currently sufficient evidence to back this up.
  
  Biscuit cup companies became popular around the break of the 20th century (with the first patent being in 1902 by Antonio Valvona in Manchester, England, for an "Apparatus for Baking Biscuit Cups for Ice Cream.") Our unique ice cream cone of today, though, remained undiscovered until 1904.
  
  So (**THIS IS THE COOL PART!) it wasn't until the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair that THE ice cream cone as we know it became popular and famous.  Although there appear to be several versions of the story of "what happened" (as there always are whenever someone gets worldwide attention), the International Association of Ice Cream Manufacturers (IAICM) credits Ernest Hamwi with the actual invention of the cone.
  
  As the story goes, pastry-maker Hamwi was selling a pastry he was calling "zalabia" (a historically Levantine, very flat, waffle-like pastry topped with confectioner's sugar).  He was set up next to an ice cream stand at the fair, which was being run by 16-year-old Arnold Fomachou.
  
  Fomachou ran out of ice cream dishes mid-way through the fair, and could find no way to attain more.  Hamwi came to his aid, wrapping his zalabias into cone-like shapes and scooping Fomachou's ice cream into them to serve to the public.
  
  The public absolutely loved them, and ice-cream sales went up even more upon this new addition.  J.P. Heckle approached Hamwi after the fair, to purchase his zalabia-making (waffle) machine and to ask him to partner with him in the beginning of the first technical ice-cream cone company - The Cornucopia Waffle Company.
  
  In 1910, Hamwi opened his own cone company - The Missouri Cone Company.
  
  Inventors continued to perfect machines for the perfect cone roll-up process, and the first patent was issued in 1924 in the USA to Carl R. Taylor (of Cleveland, Ohio) for a "machine for forming thin, freshly baked wafers while still hot into cone-shaped containers."
  How cool is that.
  
  I used this website, this website, and this website to help me write this post.
  
  Have you heard anything else about the history of ice cream cones?  What's your favorite food history?  What's your favorite type of ice cream cone?
  

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