Who Invented the Ice Cream Cone? There have been conflicting stories regarding the invention of the ice cream cone since its inception. More often than not, the creation is attributed to Ernest Hamwi, who is said to have created the first cone at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. As the story goes, Hamwi was running a booth that sold waffles. When a neighboring vendor selling ice cream ran out of cups, he constructed an edible cone from a fresh waffle, leading to the creation of the ice cream cone. According to Jane Marchiony Paretti, her father, Italo Marchiony, is the true inventor of the ice cream cone. When Marchiony arrived from Italy in 1895, he operated a push cart on Wall Street, selling lemon ices. After growing tired of losing dishes to breakage or being accidentally taken, he decided to create an edible cup for his customers. He found that a thin waffle could be shaped into a bowl while still warm and would keep its shape. His waffle cups were a hit, and soon after Marchiony designed and patented a machine to mass produce the waffles to be made into cups.
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gigglemag.com | JUNE/JULY 2016
vanilla
remains the most popular flavor among their consumers.
The average American consumes almost
22 pounds
of ice cream per year. U.S. ice cream companies made more than 872 million gallons of ice cream in 2014.
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The World’s Fair story is also true. As it turns out, according to Paretti, her father was among the vendors at the Fair. When he ran out of the waffle bowls he had brought along, he asked a nearby waffle vendor, Hamwi, to roll a waffle into the next best thing…a cone.
According to a recent survey of International Ice Cream Association member companies,