Ice cream cone

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A stack of sugar ice cream cones

An ice cream cone or cornet is a cone-shaped pastry, usually made of a wafer similar in texture to a waffle, in which ice cream is served, allowing it to be eaten without a bowl or spoon.

1 History
2 Moulded and rolled cones
3 Curiosity
4 External links

[edit] History

Paper and metal cones were used during the 19th century in France, Germany, and Britain for holding ice cream. One of the first references to an edible cone is in Mrs A. B. Marshall's Cookery Book, written in 1888 by celebrated cookery writer Agnes Marshall. The recipe for "Cornet with Cream" says that - "the cornets were made with almonds and baked in the oven, not pressed between irons". She adds - "these cornets can also be filled with any cream or water ice or set custard or fruits, and served for a dinner, luncheon, or supper dish". Mrs Marshall was an influential innovator and greatly popularised ice cream in Britain. She published two recipe books specifically about ice cream and also patented an ice cream making machine.

Strawberry ice cream in a cone.

On December 13, 1903, a New Yorker named Italo Marchiony received U.S. patent No. 746971 for a mold for making pastry cups to hold ice cream; he claimed that he has been selling ice cream in edible pastry holders since 1896. Contrary to popular belief, his patent was not for a cone and he lost the lawsuits that he filed against cone manufacturers for patent infringement. Ice cream cones were popularized in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904 at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. According to one legend, a Syrian pastry maker, Ernst Hamwi, who was selling zalabia, a crisp pastry cooked in a hot waffle-patterned press came to the aid of a neighboring ice cream vendor (perhaps Arnold Fornachon or Charles Menches) who had run out of dishes; Hamwi rolled a warm zalabia into a cone that could hold ice cream. However, numerous vendors sold pastries at the World's Fair, and several of them claimed to have invented the ice cream cone, citing a variety of inspirations. After the fair the ice cream cone became popular nationwide. Hamwi's story is largely based on a letter he wrote in 1928 to the Ice Cream Trade Journal, long after he had established the Cornucopia Waffle Company, which had grown into the Missouri Cone Company. Nationally, by that time, the ice-cream cone industry was producing some 250 million cones a year.

The owners of Doumar's Cones and BBQ in Norfolk, Virginia claim that their uncle, Abe Doumar, sold the first ice cream cones at the St. Louis World's Fair.

The first cones were rolled by hand, but in 1912, Frederick Bruckman, an inventor from Portland, Oregon, patented a machine for rolling ice cream cones. He sold his company to Nabisco in 1928.

The idea of selling a frozen ice-cream cone had long been a dream of ice-cream makers, but it wasn't until 1959 that Spica, an Italian ice-cream manufacturer based in Naples conquered the problem of the ice-cream making the cone go soggy. Spica invented a process, whereby the inside of the waffle cone was insulated from the ice-cream by a layer of oil, sugar and chocolate. Spica registered the name Cornetto in 1960. Initial sales were poor, but in 1976 Unilever bought out Spica and began a mass-marketing campaign throughout Europe. It is now one of the most popular ice-creams in the world.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Moulded and rolled cones

Original cones were rolled from flat, warm dough as it comes out of the oven and is still pliable. Moulded cones are also made, though they came somewhat later. They are made by filling a mould with dough. The original moulded cones were also pointed, and are still made. The most common moulded cones have flat bottoms; they were first made after WWII. Early molded cones were troublesome as they didn't hold the scooped ice cream well, and tended to break. The addition of moulded radial ribs inside the cone helped with both problems, and are now almost universally used.^{[citation needed]} They increase breaking strength and serve to maintain the verticality of the scooped ice cream.

[edit] Curiosity

"Ice-cream cone sign" in neuroradiology is a way to refer to a tumour, the schwannoma of the VIIIth nerve, due to its shape; the part of the tumour located inside the internal auditory canal being the cone, and the part of the tumour extruding toward the pons being the ball above the cone.