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You've probably read or heard something like the
following: "The
invention of the ice cream cone occurred in 1904 at the
St. Louis
Exposition. A vendor selling dishes of ice cream is having
a banner
sales day, but runs out of dishes on which he is serving
his treat.
Nearby is a stand belonging to a man who is selling a
waffle-like
pastry. The waffle seller ingeniously sizes up the
situation and
suggests using rolled waffles as a substitute for the
unavailable
dishes. Sales go through the roof, fairgoers are ecstatic,
and ice
cream history is made!"
But who was the waffle seller?
The International Ice Cream
Association (IICA), along with other historians, have
tried to affirm
the identity of this individual. Could it be...
- Ernest A. Hamwi - a Syrian immigrant who had a
stand at the
St. Louis Fair in which he sold a treat called
"Zalabia", a waffle-like
pastry baked on a waffle iron and topped with sugar or
other sweets. He
was interviewed by The Ice Cream Trade Journal in the
1920's, and
quoted describing how he was located next to an ice
cream booth at the
1904 exhibition. Apparently Mr. Hamwi left the Zalabia
trade and
entered the cone business soon after the St. Louis Fair.
He helped
develop the Cornucopia Waffle Company, and started the
Missouri Cone
Company in 1910.
- Abe Doumar - a Lebanese immigrant who,
according to
his son, sold souvenirs at the fair. Abe knew of the
custom from his
homeland of shaping a flat piece of pita bread into a
cone, and then
filling it with jam or other sweets. When he saw Ernest
Hamwi
making waffles, he suggested the technique to him.
Supposedly, Hamwi
was so pleased with the idea that he gave Doumar one of
his waffle
irons after the fair was over. Abe then went into
business the
following year, selling "Cornucopias" filled with ice
cream at Coney
Island. Abe's cone-making machine was still in
possession of the Doumar
family in Norfolk, Virginia, as of a few years ago.
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- Italo Marchiony - an Italian immigrant who
undeniably applied for a patent for an ice cream cone
mold in 1896,
well before the St. Louis Fair. His mold apparently
produced a soft
flat pastry, which was rolled into a cone at the time of
sale, and was
used primarily by push cart operators. His patent, #
746,971, was
issued December 15, 1903, but Marchiony always insisted
that he had
been making cones since 1896. Since 1996 was chosen by
several
organizations as the 100th Anniversary of the ice cream
cone, some
believe that Marchiony was the first to produce a cone
in 1896.
- David Avayou - a Turkish immigrant who said
his idea
came from France, where he had first seen vendors using
rolled paper
cones. A Philadelphia department store hired Avayou to
set up an ice
cream cone concession after the Fair.
- Charles Menches - a vendor at the St. Louis
Fair who
by some accounts introduced the ice cream cone on July
23, 1904. By one
version he simultaneously gave an ice cream sandwich and
a bouquet of
flowers to the young lady he was escorting to the Fair.
Not having
anything in which to place the flowers, she rolled one
of the wafers
from the sandwich into a cone to act as a temporary vase
for the
flowers. Likewise the other wafer was rolled to form a
container for
the ice cream!
Other historians indicate there were in excess of 50 ice
cream
booths as well as numerous waffle stands scattered
throughout the St.
Louis Fair grounds. In The Great American Ice Cream
Book,
author Paul Dickson believes "it is conceivable that
historic marriages
of waffle and ice cream occurred independently at several
spots on the
grounds."
But one fact remains: at the close of the 1904 St. Louis
Fair, the
popularity of this "new" manner of eating ice cream had
local
industries racing to produce molds and machines to be used
for baking
ice cream cones. Demand for cones quickly outstripped the
hand-rolled
waffle makers. By 1909 an automatic cone roller was
invented, rapidly
followed by machines that used a poured batter process,
thus
eliminating the necessity of rolling the finished product.
Cones
produced in this manner were formed by pouring batter into
a cone
shaped mold. These were the forerunners of the cones we
enjoy today.
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This is an excerpt from a longer article
in the February, 2000 issue of The Ice Screamer.
A yearly subscription to The Ice
Screamer Newsletter is just one of the benefits you
receive for joining
the Ice Screamers.
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