COMACO ALIMENTARE
The first ice creams equipped with bread wafers were made in Italy. Catherine de’ Medici through her Italian servants and cooks introduced her recipes to France during the Renaissance. In England, on the other hand, again by Italians, this tradition did not spread until the 16th century. Paper or metal cones were used in France, Germany and Britain during the 19th century for eating ice cream. One of the earliest references to an edible cone can be found in Mrs A. B. Marshall’s Cookery Book, written in 1888 by celebrated culinary writer Agnes Marshall.The recipe for “Cornetto with Cream” indicates that – “the croissants were made with almonds and baked, not pressed between irons.” She further adds – “these croissants can also be filled with any ice cream or sorbet or cream or fruit, and served for lunch or dinner. “Mrs Marshall was an influential innovator and made ice cream very popular in Britain. She published two specific recipe books on ice cream and also patented an ice cream machine. On December 13, 1903, Italo Marchioni (1868-1954), a native of Vodo di Cadore and a resident of New York City, received U.S. Patent No. 746971 for the invention of the ice cream cone, which he had been selling in America since 1896.
Indeed, it seems that the idea was born out of a state of necessity on the part of the Italian, since initially his ice cream was served in glass cups. It frequently happened that the same were not returned to the ice cream maker, or that they were accidentally broken by slipping from the hands of customers, thus causing him a small loss of capital. He is currently the most credited inventor precisely because of that patent which the same applied for in the early twentieth century. Some, however, think that the ice cream cone was instead invented in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904 at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, where the story goes that a Syrian confectioner, Enrst Hamwi, who was selling zalabia, a crisp pastry dripping with syrup cooked in a boiling wafer press, went to the aid of the nearby ice cream vendor, perhaps Arnold Fornachou or Charles Menches, who was running out of dishes, by rolling the still-warm zalabia into the shape of a cone so it could hold the ice cream. However, many men selling pastries at the World’s Fair claimed to have been the inventors of the ice cream cone and only after Marchioni, citing a variety of different inspirations. After the fair, the ice cream cone became popular in St. Louis in 1904. Hamwi’s story is solely based on a letter he wrote in 1928, a full 25 years after Marchioni’s patent, to the Ice Cream Trade Journal, after founding the Cornucopia Waffle Company, which had become the Missouri Cone Company. By that time, the ice cream cone industry was already producing about 250 million cones a year nationwide. Industrial-scale production of the first cones, which were rolled by hand, occurred around 1912. Frederick Bruckman, an inventor from Portland, Oregon, patented a machine for rolling ice cream cones. He sold his company to Nabisco in 1928. The idea of selling frozen ice cream cones had long been a dream of ice cream manufacturers, but it wasn’t until 1959 that another Italian, one Spica, an ice cream manufacturer based in Naples, solved the problem of ice cream making the cone soggy. Spica invented a process in which the inside of the wafer 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 bought Spica and began a massive marketing campaign throughout Europe, making the “Cornetto” one of the most popular ice creams in the world. (Source: Wikipedia)
