While you're enjoying your favorite ice cream on National Ice Cream Cone Day, September 22, think about the container.
Is it waffle cone, sugar cone, or a cake cup?
All of these are relatively new ways to eat ancient confection and there is much disagreement as to who first came up with the edible cone.
In the 19th century, ice cream was served on biscuits and wafers, in cups and bowls, and in glass, metal, and paper cones. It was stuffed into cornets and cornucopias. About that time, street vendors appeared, selling ice cream from in biscuit cups.
Some say the inventor of the edible dish was Italo Marchiony. In 1896, he had a chain of 45 ice cream pushcarts in New York City; he used edible biscuit cups and even got a patent in 1903 for a machine to make them.
But it wasn't a cone.
It wasn't until the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair that the American cone was born, and the debate began.
One convincing story is that one of the 50 ice cream vendors at the fair, Arnold Fornachou, ran out of paper ice cream cups. Ernest Hamwi was selling waffles in the next cart and rolled up one for him to use. When Hamwi saw people liked the combination, he started making ice cream waffle cones for other vendors.
Soon most vendors copied the presentation. Many claimed to be the inventor of the cone; a few said they worked for Hamwi.
In the next 20 years, several patents were issued on cone-making machines, several cone companies produced enough ready-mades for Fairs nationwide, and by 1924, production reached 245 million. Modern machines can produce 150,000 rolled cones every 14 hours. Joy Cone Company in Hermitage, PA, is the largest ice cream cone company in the world and produces more than 1.5 billion cones each year. It opened in 1918 and is still owned by the same family.
