How to eat: ice-cream cones | Ice-cream and sorbet | The Guardian 25/08/2021 17)29

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How to eat
Ice$cream and How to eat: ice+cream cones
sorbet

Tony Naylor
Fri 20 Aug 2021 11.24 BST

M
Made in Manchester? Ice-cream cones with raspberry sauce and chocolate. Photograph: Sally Anscombe/Getty Images

anchester is the birthplace of many earth- Advertisement

shattering phenomena: the first programmable

computer, Phil Foden, Factory Records,
graphene, Emmeline Pankhurst, Space Afrika,
vegetarianism, communism and Coronation Street. But could
the city have also played a pivotal role in creating … the ice-
cream cone?

Definitely, to quote one of the city’s favourite sons, maybe.

In 1901, Antonio Valvona, one of many ice-cream makers in

Manchester’s Little Italy, registered the first patented machine
to make edible biscuit containers for his ices. These were cups
not cones and the idea was not entirely new (in 1887, England’s
so-called Queen of Ices, Agnes B Marshall, published a recipe
for serving ice-cream in baked cornets). But in partnership
with businessman Frank Marchiony, Valvona was soon
manufacturing his cups in New York, a full two years before

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How to eat: ice-cream cones | Ice-cream and sorbet | The Guardian 25/08/2021 17)29

manufacturing his cups in New York, a full two years before

ice-cream cones – then known as cornucopias – became a
breakout hit at the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair.

Quite when and how the cup became a cone is lost in a

bewildering number of competing claims. The early 1900s US
ice-cream scene was a lucrative, competitive world of dramatic
subplots. By 1910, Frank Marchiony and his cousin, Italo, now
regularly identified as the true creator of the ice-cream cone,
were duking it out in court over the right to produce them. But,
undoubtedly, east Manchester’s industrial ingenuity fed into
this transformation.

That ingenuity liberated ice-cream lovers from the dangers of

the unhygienic “penny-lick”, small, hastily rinsed glasses from
which the great unwashed then ate ice-cream. It also saved
humanity from the precarious engineering failure that is the
ice-cream wafer sandwich; today enjoyed only by pretentious
mavericks.

The cone was clearly superior and came to dominate 20th-

century ice-cream. Tub purists fight a rearguard action against
its ubiquity, but in vain. From the classic icky van soft-serve 99
to deluxe waffle cones piled high with sea buckthorn gelato
and crushed Brontë pistachios, the cone is the UK’s portable,
one-handed, waste-free favourite.

But what constitutes a next-level cone? How to Eat – the series

examining the optimum way to eat Britain’s favourite foods –
has some thoughts on that.

Cone selection

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From ice-creams misguidedly mined with pieces of branded Indigenous website to
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age of accelerating ice-cream sophistication. Therefore, it
seems sensible to prioritise the ice-cream’s flavour and not, as
you eat down the cone, have it skewed by the biscuity, often
sickly sweet flavour of these supposedly upmarket sugar or
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How to eat: ice-cream cones | Ice-cream and sorbet | The Guardian 25/08/2021 17)29

sickly sweet flavour of these supposedly upmarket sugar or

waffle* cones.

Good ice-cream shines in a neutral wafer cone. With the added

bonus that, if you fail to force the ice-cream down the cone’s
stem (see, eating action), you will not be left eating a dry brown
cone but rapidly dissolving fragments of easily digested wafer.

Wafer that is a palate cleanser after the main event. Note: seek
out XL wafer cones if you require a double-scoop load
capability.

There are sensational waffle cones out there, made with honey,
treacle, syrup, unusual oils, brown sugar, butter and
cinnamon. In their tuile-adjacent, caramelised complexity they
match the layered flavours of the ice-cream they hold. But
these are rare. More often, the waffle cone is used for two
reasons. Its rigid edges allow staff to scrape in dense ice-cream
with fewer breakages and this faux-artisan prop helps justify
the £4 price-tag. Does it add to the overall experience, though?
Not regularly.

*Sugar and waffle cones are made from similar ingredients. The
former are smoother with a flat rim. Thicker waffle cones are
grid-indented with a curved rim.

Cone accoutrements

A cone with all the trimmings. Photograph: Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images

From rims decorated with hundreds and thousands (how old

are you, five?) to the “chocolate-flavoured” substances in
which cones are sometimes dipped, it all feels like unnecessary
gilding – an OTT eye-catcher that adds little flavour.

Prissy napkin-twists or paper sleeves wrapped around the stem

are superfluous, too. This supposedly classy touch denies you
the tactile pleasure of feeling the textured cone. If ice-cream is
dripping on to your fingers, you are eating too slowly.

One scoop or two?

Curiously, HTE has never seen anyone rocking two different
flavours on a traditional, twin-cup wafer cone. That is a vessel
solely reserved for the double 99 (about which, HTE remains
ambivalent). Rather, the two-scoop is a modern invention,
simultaneously driven by the rise of larger, posher cones, the
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simultaneously driven by the rise of larger, posher cones, the

Insta-friendly colours of loaded jumbo serves and late
capitalism’s ability to seed insatiable greedy maximalism in all
things. Enough is never enough. More is always more.

Or so we are sold. In fact, enjoying one solo ice-cream flavour is

optimal. If the ice-cream is good enough, it will sustain

interest. It should be obvious that if you choose to combine

flavours, those flavours should complement each other in a
mutually reinforcing way. For example, salted caramel and
chocolate rather than summer berry cheesecake and mint choc
chip. But given some of the provocative abominations you see
people eating, this bears repeating.

Eating action

Could do better … Photograph: Sally Anscombe/Getty Images

In Italy, la passe+iata, promenading of an evening quite

possibly with an ice-cream in hand, is a national pastime. But
walking with an ice-cream distracts you from eating. The ice-
cream becomes incidental. That seems a shame.

Better to find a wall, bus-stop or patch of grass where you can

sit, or a doorway to hover in, where you can eat intently.

First, lick rapidly around the cone’s rim, rotating it against your
tongue, to prevent drips. Once you have created a manageable
dome, relax. You can now proceed at a leisurely pace,
luxuriating in every steady, purposeful lick. And it should be a
lick, not a slurp, not a gulp, definitely not a monstrous bite
(only psychopaths bite ice-cream). Occasionally, you may need
to execute a guppy-like nibble to remove any teetering peeks
but these should be modest and infrequent, otherwise you are
inhaling rather than enjoying the ice-cream. Lick that cone into
submission.

As you do so, with the flat of your tongue, gently force some
ice-cream down into the cone. It is an undignified procedure
that requires dexterity, but it is essential to avoid being left
with, horrifyingly, an empty cone end. There is, literally, no fun
in that.

Toppings … or not

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Does plain mean perfect? Photograph: Lucy Lambriex/Getty Images

The list of desirable ice-cream toppings is remarkably short. In

the right flavour context, the alien, hypersynthetic intensity of
raspberry or strawberry sauce is exceptional (contrast these
with the musty artifice of most bitter chocolate syrups).
Several rungs up the culinary ladder, salted caramel sauce
improves everything: chicken, muesli, definitely ice-cream. A
dusting of honeycomb shards or salty biscuit crumbs can work,
too, but little else does.

Chopped nuts turn to gravel in ice-cream. Fudge pieces or

sticks are simply too much. Ornamental wafers are baffling (no
one has ever said: “You know what this ice-cream needs, more
wafer!”) Marshmallow pieces, jelly sweets or other cut-price
confectionery have no place in ice-cream, galumphing around
with their sugary size nines. Smashed meringue sounds more
attractive but is, likewise, nauseating. Freeze-dried fruits could
add a puckering zing to ice-creams but are unleashed with all
the subtlety of an artillery barrage.

HTE would argue the biggest myth in the topping game is that
chocolate works with ice-cream. It is a combination that
repeatedly delivers less than the sum of its parts.

Think of chocolate (chips, balls, shards etc) as flavour and

aroma compounds locked in cocoa butter. That butter must
melt readily for a smooth mouthfeel and to release said
compounds. Paired with ice-cream, it will struggle to do so,
because unless you hold it in your mouth for an unnaturally
long time, the chocolate will be too cold to melt readily.

Tackling this knotty problem, creating chocolate that behaves

favourably in ice-cream, is one that food science has only
recently got to grips with. You cannot simply smash up any old
chocolate and dip a cone in it. You may get a fleeting chocolate
hit that way but, in HTE’s opinion, it will have a relatively
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hit that way but, in HTE’s opinion, it will have a relatively

gritty, waxy, diminished quality. Better to save that chocolate
for another time.

Where
Have you ever seen anyone serve ice-cream in cones at home?
Baffling, isn’t it? A waste of money, calories and time if you

own bowls and spoons. In public, the ice-cream cone is

convenient. At home, it is a rather ludicrous affectation. As for
buying equipment to make your own waffle cones, HTE is
putting that idea on a to-do list for the 12th of never.

Drink
Nothing. Ice-cream wreaks confounding temperature havoc
with tea and coffee, turns wine into battery acid and beer into a
sliver of metallic bitterness. If you really must jet-hose your
tonsils, something carbonated and stridently sweet that can
assert itself against the ice-cream is necessary. Fizzy pop,
basically.

So, ice-cream cones, how do you eat yours?

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