The ice cream cone
Legend has it that the ice cream cone was invented as an expedient during the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, but that is incorrect. Recipes for edible conveyances of ice cream to the mouth appeared in French cookbooks as early as 1825. In a later recipe the cones, which were called cornets, were made with almonds, and are part of the recipe for a dish called cornets and cream, in which they were filled with ice cream.
At least two patents were filed for ice cream cone machines prior to the celebrated St. Louis World’s Fair, one in Manchester, England by an ice cream vendor in 1902, and another by an ice cream salesman in New York, who called the product of his device edible containers. Still, there can be no doubt that the ice cream cone achieved its fame at the St. Louis World’s Fair, when it received wide exposure, and international acclaim.
At the fair an ice cream vendor named Arnold Fornachou was selling his product briskly, as could be expected on a typical St. Louis summer day, when he ran out of the paper containers in which he was scooping his product. Fornachou bought waffles rolled into cones from a nearby vendor to alleviate his shortage of cups, and the ice cream in the cone became instantly popular with his customers, drawing more and more to his booth.
At the same time another entrepreneur at the same exposition sold ice cream in cones of his own invention. Abe Doumar designed his own cone rolling machine and sold his cones at the St. Louis World’s Fair, as well as in 1907 at the Jamestown Exposition, and eventually developed a machine which produced twenty cones per minute. Whether Doumar or Fornachou was first is immaterial, the ice cream cone became the official dessert of the State of Missouri.
By 1928 the inventor J.T. Parker of Texas had created an ice cream cone which was prefilled with ice cream, drizzled with chocolate, sprinkled with nuts, wrapped in paper, and could be stored in the grocer’s freezer until purchased for consumption. In 1931 he started a company to market the product, which he named The Drumstick Company. Sixty years later his company became part of Nestle.