Ice-cream cones, the ingenious invention of American immigrants

DETROIT (AP) — Read this quickly, before the ice cream melts into the cone.

Ice cream was a rare and expensive treat for centuries because of the difficulty of storing ice. In the summer of 1790, President George Washington spent $200 on ice cream, the equivalent of $7,259 today, according to the International Dairy Foods Association.

By the 1800s, inventions like mechanical refrigeration had made ice cream cheaper and more accessible. But America’s pushcart vendors needed a way to serve ice cream to customers.

Enter “penny licks.” Customers would pay a penny for a scoop of ice cream served in a thick glass, which they would lick clean and hand back to the vendor. The glass — sometimes rinsed, sometimes not — was then filled for the next customer. But vendors were frustrated by broken glass and cities were concerned about the spread of disease. London banned penny licks in 1898.

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Italian immigrants came to the rescue. In 1902, Antonio Valvona, an ice-cream maker living in Manchester, England, was granted a U.S. patent for a metal mold that could form edible waffle-like cups. He quickly started selling the cups on both sides of the Atlantic.

The following year, Italo Marchiony, an ice cream vendor in New York, was granted a patent for a similar device. Marchiony went on to develop the ice-cream sandwich.

But it was the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair that gave the ice-cream cone its now-familiar shape and vaulted it to popularity.

Several concessionaires at the fair have been touted as the inventors of the ice-cream cone. Joy Baking Group, founded in 1918 and currently making 2 billion cones a year, credits Ernest Hamwi, a 20-year-old Syrian immigrant.

Hamwi was selling zalabiyeh – a crisp, fried pastry – in a booth next to Albert Aboussie, a Lebanese-born ice cream vendor. When Aboussie ran out of paper cups, Hamwi began rolling his pastries into cones dubbed “cornucopias.” They were an instant hit.

By 1910, “cornucopia” had been simplified to “cone,” and Hamwi founded the Missouri Cone Co.

Cone technology quickly advanced, with machines replacing hand-rolling. For those who wanted a lighter texture, the cake cone arrived in the early 1940s — around the time Dairy Queen and Baskin-Robbins emerged.

Increasingly health-conscious Americans eat less ice cream than they used to. In 1984, the average American consumed 17.8 pounds of regular ice cream each year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. By 2024, that had fallen to 12 pounds.

But as anyone from George Washington to Ben & Jerry could tell you, on a hot summer night it’s a treat that’s hard to beat.

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Part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. For more American objects, click here. For more stories on the anniversary, click here.