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A stack of sugar ice-cream cones

An ice-cream cone or cornet is a cone-shaped pastry, usually made of a wafer similar in texture to a waffle, in which ice cream is served, allowing it to be eaten without a bowl or spoon. Various types of ice-cream cones include waffle cones, wafer cones (incorrectly referred to as cake cones), and sugar cones.

The exact origin of the ice-cream cone is unknown. An 1807 engraving shows a woman consuming an ice-cream cone at Frascati, a restaurant in Paris, France. Frascati opened in 1789, but food historians do not know when the restaurant first served ice-cream cones or if it was the first to do so. Paper and metal cones were used during the 19th century in France, Germany, and Britain for holding ice cream.

An early printed reference to an edible cone is in Mrs A. B. Marshall's Cookery Book, written in 1888 by celebrated cookery writer Agnes Marshall. Her recipe for "Cornet with Cream" says that - "the cornets were made with almonds and baked in the oven, not pressed between irons". She adds - "these cornets can also be filled with any cream or water ice or set custard or fruits, and served for a dinner, luncheon, or supper dish". Mrs Marshall was an influential innovator and greatly popularised ice cream in Britain. She published two recipe books specifically about ice cream and also patented an ice-cream making machine. (See [1] and [2])

Strawberry ice cream in a cone.

Chocolate ice cream in a "kiddie cup"

In the United States, ice-cream cones were popularized in the first decade of the 20th century. On December 13, 1903, a New Yorker named Italo Marchioni received U.S. patent 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.

Many Americans ate their first ice cream cone in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904 at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. According to one legend, a Syrian pastry maker, Ernst Hamwi, who was selling zalabia, a crisp pastry cooked in a hot waffle-patterned press came to the aid of a neighboring ice cream vendor (perhaps Arnold Fornachon) who had run out of dishes; Hamwi rolled a warm zalabia into a cone that could hold ice cream. However, numerous vendors sold pastries at the World's Fair, and several of them claimed to have invented the ice-cream cone, citing a variety of inspirations. Hamwi's story is largely based on a letter he wrote in 1928 to the Ice Cream Trade Journal, long after he had established the Cornucopia Waffle Company (later the Missouri Cone Company). Nationally, by that time, the ice-cream cone industry was producing some 250 million cones a year.

The owners of Doumar's Cones and BBQ in Norfolk, Virginia claim that their uncle, Abe Doumar, sold the first ice-cream cones at the St. Louis World's Fair. Other World's Fair vendors who claimed to have invented the cone include Nick and Albert Kabbaz, David Avayou, and Charles and Frank Menches.

The first cones were rolled by hand but, in 1912, Frederick Bruckman, an inventor from Portland, Oregon, patented a machine for rolling ice-cream cones. He sold his company to Nabisco in 1928. Nabisco is still producing ice-cream cones, as it has been since 1928. Independent ice-cream providers such as Ben & Jerry's make their own ice-cream cones.

The idea of selling a frozen ice-cream cone had long been a dream of ice-cream makers, but it wasn't until 1959 that Spica, an Italian ice-cream manufacturer based in Naples conquered the problem of the ice-cream making the cone go soggy. Spica 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 bought out Spica and began a mass-marketing campaign throughout Europe. It is now one of the most popular ice creams in the world.^{[citation needed]}

In recent years, some brands have started to 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 new types of wafer cup are called "kiddie cups" or "cool cups".

"Ice-cream cone sign" in neuroradiology is a way to refer to a tumour, the schwannoma of the VIIIth nerve, due to its shape; the part of the tumour located inside the internal auditory meatus being the cone, and the part of the tumour extruding toward the pons being the ball above the cone.

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