An ice cream cone, poke or cornet is a dry, cone-shaped pastry, usually made of a wafer similar in texture to a waffle, allowing ice cream to be eaten without a bowl or spoon. Various types of ice-cream cones include waffle cones, cake cones (or wafer cones), pretzel cones, and sugar cones.
Edible cones have been mentioned in French cooking books as early as 1825, Julien Archambault describes a cone where one can roll "little waffles".[1] Another printed reference to an edible cone is in Mrs A. B. Marshall’s Cookery Book, written in 1888 by Agnes B. Marshall (1855–1905) of England. Her recipe for "Cornet with Cream" says that - "the cornets were made with almonds and baked in the oven, not pressed between irons". [2][3]
In the United States, ice-cream cones were popularized in the first decade of the 20th century. 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.
During the 1904 St. Louis Worlds Fair, The Banner Creamery's owner, George Bang was selling ice cream. He is the one who ran out of bowls and was given the rolled up waffle to serve it in. The Banner Creamery was located on Warne Avenue. Mr. Bang also invented what he called the Take Home a Sundae, in a box and a combination of three flavors of ice cream in one container...the precursor to Neapolitan Ice Cream. He also invented an early "cooler" to transport his ice cream from St. Louis to his summer home in Michigan.
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. Nabisco is still producing ice-cream cones, as it has been since 1928. Independent ice-cream providers such as Ben & Jerry's make their own ice-cream cones.
The idea of selling a frozen ice-cream cone - so that the cone and the ice-cream could be one item, storable in a freezer - had long been a dream of ice-cream makers, but it wasn't until 1928 when J.T. "Stubby" Parker of Fort Worth, Texas created an ice cream cone that could be stored in a grocer's freezer. To market it, he formed The Drumstick Company in 1931. In 1991, The Drumstick Company was purchased by Nestle. In 1959, Spica, an Italian ice-cream manufacturer based in Naples 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.
Some brands produce something very similar to the traditional ice-cream cone, but with a flat bottom, which enables it to stand upright without danger of falling. These types of wafer cups are called "kiddie cups", "cake cones", or "cool cups".
A variety of cone exists that allows two scoops of ice cream to be served side by side, instead of the usual straight up order.[4] The side-by-side variety has been the standard "double-header" in Australia for many decades, the 'two-up' variety is a relatively recent innovation in Gelato shops mostly. The side-by-side variety in the footnoted illustration is an inferior version that tends to fracture easily at the base of each 'cup', the Australian variety has the base of the cone flared out more to buttress the two separate cups.
A premium variety of cones has the top covered in solid chocolate sauce.
In Britain and Ireland, a '99' is the term for a vanilla ice cream cone with a Cadbury's chocolate flake pressed into the ice cream such that roughly half the flake is visible.
