Many summertime favorites first gained popularity at the 1904 World's Fair

by Nicholas Jain, posted April 12, 2010

People remember the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, known as the 1904 World’s Fair, in St. Louis for the original Ferris Wheel, human "zoos" featuring indigenous people from around the world and ornate buildings but often also for a variety of foods. Rumors exist that inventors created the ice cream cone, hot dog on a bun, iced tea, cotton candy and other treats at the fair.

The ice cream cone
Although the names involved are debatable, the story behind the invention of the ice cream cone is that an ice cream concessionaire ran out of clean ice cream dishes, so a nearby zalabia, a flat Middle-Eastern waffle-like pastry, vendor wrapped one of his hot pastries into a funnel-like shape. When it cooled, it hardened and became a suitable container for ice cream. Fairgoers called these concoctions World’s Fair Cornucopias.

Most stories credit a Syrian immigrant Ernest Hamwi with developing the first cone at the fair. Joseph Gustaitis explains in "Who Invented the Ice Cream Cone?" in American History Illustrated that after the fair, he started the Cornucopia Waffle Company and later the Missouri Cone Company. In 1920, he received a patent for a pastry cone-making machine. The family of Abe Doumar, who still own Doumar’s Cones and Barbecue in Norfolk, Va., claim their ancestor was actually the inventor in “Zalabia and the First Ice-Cream Cone” in Saudi Aramco World by Jack Marlowe. They still make zalabia cones on a machine Abe Doumar invented and used when he opened an ice cream stand at Coney Island, New York in 1905 after the fair.

It is possible that on the huge 1,200-acre fairgrounds two parties solved the same problem independently. Charles Menches was an ice cream vendor with a booth next to Hamwi and he claimed that he rolled two zalabias in order to make a holder for a female friend’s ice cream and flowers, according to Gustaitis. Adding to the debate, a year before the fair in New York, Italo Marchiony filed a patent for an ice cream cone although it differs from the rolled zalabia in that it has a flat bottom.

The hot dog bun
Anton Feuchtwanger’s story connects hot dogs to the fair. According to the Oscar Mayer company, he was a vendor who served hot sausages with gloves to people to prevent burns. When he ran out of gloves, his baker brother-in-law made buns for the hot dogs.

Like the ice cream cone invention, the hot dog bun was an edible improvisation to hold a food product. The issue with this story is that Feuchtwanger actually started selling hot dogs on a bun before the fair in 1883. The hot dog was already popular at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and vendors served it at the games for the St. Louis Browns baseball team. Although it was not invented at the fair, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition played a role in popularizing the hot dog on a bun.

Iced tea
No one at the fair invented iced tea but it became well known there. It appeared on many menus at the fair alongside the more traditional hot tea. Iced tea had appeared on menus for years before the fair at the Chicago Exposition in 1893 according to Pamela Vaccaro’s book Beyond The Ice Cream Cone- The Whole Scoop on Food at the 1904 World’s Fair.

Dr. Pepper
The fair was instrumental in the birth of Dr. Pepper. Two pharmacists in Waco, Texas, Charles Alderton and Wade Morrison invented Dr. Pepper. Vaccaro writes that it was popular in their Waco drugstore and they decided to form a bottling company and launch the product at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. They sold the product at soda fountains on the fairgrounds and it was a success.

Cotton Candy and Puffed Rice
In her book, Vaccaro also explains that two foods that actually made their debut at the fair were cotton candy and puffed rice. People at the fair called cotton candy fairy floss. William Morrison and John C. Wharton from Tennessee made it in an electrical machine in the fair that melted sugar and spun it out in a pan. Also, the Quaker Oats company had an exhibit where puffed rice was shot out of cannons. The company had recently invented the process of puffing rice and used the fair to introduce and advertise it.

Although much of the food lore about the Louisiana Purchase Exposition is myth, the fair was important in introducing many currently loved foods.

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