Ice cream cone
Encyclopedia
Pastry
Pastry is the name given to various kinds of baked products made from ingredients such as flour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening, baking powder and/or eggs. Small cakes, tarts and other sweet baked products are called "pastries."...
, usually made of a wafer
Wafer (cooking)
In cooking, a wafer is a crisp, often sweet, very thin, flat, and dry biscuit, often used to decorate ice cream. Wafers can also be made into cookies with cream flavoring sandwiched between them. They frequently have a waffle surface pattern but may also be patterned with insignia of the food's...
similar in texture to a waffle
Waffle
A waffle is a batter- or dough-based cake cooked in a waffle iron patterned to give a distinctive and characteristic shape. There are many variations based on the type and shape of the iron and the recipe used....
, allowing ice cream
Ice cream
Ice cream is a frozen dessert usually made from dairy products, such as milk and cream, and often combined with fruits or other ingredients and flavours. Most varieties contain sugar, although some are made with other sweeteners...
to be eaten without a bowl
Bowl (vessel)
A bowl is a common open-top container used in many cultures to serve food, and is also used for drinking and storing other items. They are typically small and shallow, although some, such as punch bowls and salad bowls, are larger and often intended to serve many people.Bowls have existed for...
or spoon
Spoon
A spoon is a utensil consisting of a small shallow bowl, oval or round, at the end of a handle. A type of cutlery , especially as part of a place setting, it is used primarily for serving. Spoons are also used in food preparation to measure, mix, stir and toss ingredients...
. Various types of ice-cream cones include waffle cones, cake cones (or wafer cones), pretzel
Pretzel
A pretzel is a type of baked food made from dough in soft and hard varieties and savory or sweet flavors in a unique knot-like shape, originating in Europe...
cones, and sugar
Sugar
Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...
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". 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".
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
named Italo Marchiony received U.S. patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
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 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
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
, patented a machine for rolling ice-cream cones. He sold his company to Nabisco
Nabisco
Nabisco is an American brand of cookies and snacks. Headquartered in East Hanover, New Jersey, the company is a subsidiary of Illinois-based Kraft Foods. Nabisco's plant in Chicago, a production facility at 7300 S...
in 1928. Nabisco
Nabisco
Nabisco is an American brand of cookies and snacks. Headquartered in East Hanover, New Jersey, the company is a subsidiary of Illinois-based Kraft Foods. Nabisco's plant in Chicago, a production facility at 7300 S...
is still producing ice-cream cones, as it has been since 1928. Independent ice-cream providers such as Ben & Jerry's
Ben & Jerry's
Ben & Jerry's is an American ice cream company, a division of the British-Dutch Unilever conglomerate, that manufactures ice cream, frozen yogurt, sorbet, and ice cream novelty products, manufactured by Ben & Jerry's Homemade Holdings, Inc., headquartered in South Burlington, Vermont, United...
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
Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth is the 16th-largest city in the United States of America and the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas. Located in North Central Texas, just southeast of the Texas Panhandle, the city is a cultural gateway into the American West and covers nearly in Tarrant, Parker, Denton, and...
created an ice cream cone that could be stored in a grocer's freezer. To market it, he formed The Drumstick
Drumstick (ice cream)
Drumstick is the brand name for a variety of ice cream cones sold in the United States, Australia, Canada, Malaysia, and other countries across the world. The original product was invented by I.C...
Company in 1931. In 1991, The Drumstick Company was purchased by Nestle
Nestlé
Nestlé S.A. is the world's largest food and nutrition company. Founded and headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland, Nestlé originated in a 1905 merger of the Anglo-Swiss Milk Company, established in 1867 by brothers George Page and Charles Page, and Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé, founded in 1866 by Henri...
. In 1959, Spica, an Italian ice-cream manufacturer based in Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of 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
Unilever
Unilever is a British-Dutch multinational corporation that owns many of the world's consumer product brands in foods, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products....
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. 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.