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Ice cream patent: from Naples to Shanghai
You might have noticed a new Italian ice cream shop in Shanghai: Grom. I love ice cream and I couldn't miss it… really delicious actually. But while licking my very Italian ice cream cone (in Italy we do not eat ice cream cone with the spoon!) I started wondering about this amazing invention. And when I wonder, I can't help but searching for answers.
Tracing the origins of ice cream in antiquity is complex: the references to the refrigeration of fruit, milk and honey meet both in the ancient texts and in the chronicles of the most famous archaeological discoveries.
Some scholars trace the origin of the ice cream to about 3,000 years before Christ in the populations of the Far East, in particular Chinese: a frozen mixture of milk and rice was used in China around 200 BC and by means of the Mongolic invasions, this kind of ice cream landed in Greece and Turkey, expanding to other countries in the Mediterranean area.
Starting from the ninth Century, the Arabs began to create the first sherbets in Sicily using water, sugar, herbs and spices; to make them freeze they placed them in containers with ice and salt.
During the Middle Ages the first fruit juices were frozen, but only at the end of 1600 Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, Sicilian cook, began to work on a machine designed to perfect the production of sorbets. After numerous attempts, he created the perfect blend to have a soft, fresh and pleasant flavour.
He exported his recipe to France and in 1686 he opened the "Café Procope" in Paris, where he was recognized as the inventor of ice cream and where he was granted permission from Louis XIV to sell frozen water, that is to say our slush, fruit ice creams, lemon or orange juice ice cream, strawberry sorbet, "anise blossoms" and "Cinnamon Flowers".
Paul Verlaine au café Procope peint par Césare Bacchi en 1938 (c) WikiCommons
Dei Coltelli had the exclusive license of these sweets and his place in a short time became the meeting point of many intellectuals: Voltaire, George Sand, Balzac, Victor Hugo, Diderot, d'Alembert, De Musset, Verlaine, Guillotinand, it is said, even Napoleon.
By the way, if you're interested, the Cafe Procope is still working.
In 1843 Nancy Johnson designed the first hand-crank ice cream making machine and was awarded the patent for it.
Mass production of ice cream started shortly after in 1851 by Jacob Fussell, the milk dealer, who started the manufacture of ice cream originally to utilise the daily excess of cream. This mass production made ice cream much more affordable for all.
Jimi Jones Visuals LLD
So, modern ice cream is almost certainly an Italian invention – derived from Arabian sweets and with a long tradition in China too – but it is not clear who was the first to think of serving it in a cone.
The New York Times relates that the idea comes from the United States, precisely from the World Fair of St. Louis (Missouri) of 1904.
At that time, eating was still an act very much related to certain behavioral norms: usually people would sit around a table set with napkins and cutlery, and also the ice cream was served in a dish (or glass) and consumed with a teaspoon. According to the New York Times version, one of the sellers present at the St. Louis Fair found a more practical system, to allow tourists to eat ice cream while walking around: it was the Syrian pastry chef Ernest Hamwi, salesman of "Zalabia", a dense paste cooked in a waferpress.
The first receipt of the "cornets with cream", though, possibly the earliest publication of the edible ice cream cone, was included in a book published in 1888 by Agnes Marshall, called the "Queen of Ices" for her works on ice cream and other frozen desserts. She also patented an ice cream machine in 1885.
Furthermore, ice cream cone patent was registered in 1903 by Italo Marchioni, an Italian immigrant residing in New York who changed his namein Marchiony (which is definitely a much more American name).
After him, there is a long list of “inventors” of cones who patented cones and cone machines for ice cream.
Invented in Italy in 1960, Cornetto is now one of the most popular ice cream cone in the world.
It is so popular, that there is a Cornetto Trilogy movie series, directed by Edgar Wright: each film in the trilogy is connected to a specific Cornetto flavour appearing in the movies. Actually, after the reference of Cornetto as a hangover cure in the first movie, the cast had Cornetto for free and the director was trying to have it again for the second movie. He failed, by the way. But still, the Cornetto remains also in the third film.
For a long time, though, the idea of selling frozen ice-cream cones had been impractical, as the ice cream would soak into the cone during the manufacturing process and make it soggy and unpalatable when served.
1953- Spica manufacture. Photo by Riccardo Carbone
In 1959, Spica, an Italian ice cream manufacturer based in Naples, 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 (meaning "little horn" in Italian) in 1960. Initial sales were poor, but in 1976 Unilever bought out Spica and began a mass-marketing campaign throughout Europe transforming the Cornetto into the world's best known ice cream cone.
Unilever was born in 1930 from the unification of two companies, the English Lever Brothers and the Dutchman Margarin Unie. Now is one of the most important multinationals in the world and has its registered offices in London and Rotterdam.
It's present in over 90 countries and holds consumer brands such as Algida, Findus, Lipton, Santa Rosa, Calvé, Knorr, Slim Fast, Cif, Hellmann's, Vim, Lysoform, Svelto, Dimensions, Dove, Clear, Atkinson, Mentadent, Pepsodent, Fissan.
And, sice 2015, even Grom.
HFG Law&Intellectual Property
