For more than a century, Americans have enjoyed ice cream in a cone. What better way to get a double scoop than in a waffle, sugar, or wafer cone?
Making its Appearance
Italo Martialy produced the first ice cream cone in 1896. Marchiony invented the ice cream con in New York City. He emigrated to America from Italy at the end of the 1800s. In December 1903, he was granted a US patent.
Ernest A. Hamwi was a Syrian concessionaire who introduced a similar cone at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Hamwi sold zalabis, a waffle-like crisp pastry, in a booth next to an ice cream vendor. The ice cream vendor was out of dishes due to its popularity. Hamwi came up with a simple solution for the ice cream vendor’s dilemma: he rolled out one of his wafers into a cone or cornucopia and gave it to him. The cone cooled down in just a few moments, and when the vendor filled it with ice cream, it was a hit.
The Business Is Born
St. Louis, which is a town of foundries, seized on the success of the cones. Ingenious people created special baking equipment to make the World’s Fair Cornucopia Cones.
Stephen Sullivan from Sullivan, Missouri, was the first independent operator in the ice cream cone business. Sullivan served ice cream cones in 1906 at the Modern Woodmen of America Frisco Log Rolling, Sullivan, Missouri.
Hamwi also worked for the Cornucopia Waffle Company. In 1910, Hamwi founded the Missouri Cone Company. Later, it was known as the Western Cone Company.
Two distinct cone types emerged as the modern ice cream cone evolved. The rolled waffle was a waffle that had been baked into a round shape and then moved (first manually, then mechanically) when it came off of the grill. It hardened into a crisp cone in a matter of seconds. The second type was made by either pouring batter in a shell and inserting a core, on which the cone is baked, then removing it, or by pouring batter in a mold and baking it, then splitting the mold to remove the cone with ease.
The cone industry expanded in the 1920s. In 1924, cone production reached a record of 245 million. The ice cream cone that we know today is the result of slight changes to automatic machinery. Today, machines capable of producing 150,000 cones per day can roll out millions of cones.
