ST. LOUIS — The most popular and long-standing myths of St. Louis stem from the 1904 World's Fair.
The event was rife with new experiences for everyone who attended, including unfamiliar cultures, state-of-the-art technology and still-standing architecture. The new "1904 World's Fair Exhibit" launched at the Missouri History Museum on Tuesday takes a deep dive into all of these topics and more.
One of those topics is the vast amount of food invention myths that have stuck around since the fair. The four foods people most commonly claim were invented at the St. Louis fair were the ice cream cone, hot dogs, hamburgers and iced tea.
Is there any truth baked into the food claims? We sunk our teeth into the facts to VERIFY.
Our sources:
- Amanda Clark, public historian at the Missouri History Museum
- Robert Moss, historian and food writer
Question: The ice cream cone
Was the ice cream cone invented at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis?
Answer:
No, the ice cream cone was not invented at the 1904 World's Fair. But, it may have been popularized there.
What we found:
The fanciful story goes like this: An ice cream vendor ran out of serving dishes for to serve his ice cream. Luckily, a waffle vendor was nearby and rolled his waffles into cones for the sweet cream.
It's a nice little story that easily explains the food's invention. Moss said this is one of the easiest red flags to use when trying to debunk a food myth.
"It's a human trait to not only want to know exactly when something originated ... but we also want to know who did it and it's better if it's a dramatic story," Moss said. The truth is often a lot more complicated, a lot less exciting and a lot less clear-cut.
The true story of the ice cream cone, for instance, started years before 1904. There were various efforts to try and figure out how to serve ice cream in easily transportable and disposable containers for several decades before the fair, including "penny licks," edible paper and even baked edible teacups.
There are also accounts of people eating ice cream cones at the Fair, then called the 'cornucopia ice cream sandwich,' according to Moss. There were also numerous patent disputes for various edible ice cream cones right after the Fair ended.
However, there's no documentation of the ice cream cone's "invention" at the Fair; only its popularization.
"You see lots of other fairs, like county fairs and state fairs, in 1905 that are selling ice cream concessions with ads saying 'As seen at the World's Fair in St. Louis'," Moss said. "We have documentation that the St. Louis World's Fair launched the ice cream cone all across the United States ... No documentation that it was actually invented in an act of desperation."
Question: Hamburger, hot dog and iced tea
Was the hamburger, hot dog and/or iced tea invented at the Fair?
Answer:
No, the hamburger, hot dog nor iced tea was invented at the Fair.
What we found:
Each of the other big food invention myths also have a simple, false story to go along with their supposed "invention":
- A sausage vendor was giving people white gloves to hold sausages. When he ran out, his brother-in-law baked buns to hold the meat.
- A man from Texas served ground beef between two slices of bread to make it easier for fairgoers to walk around with.
- No one would buy from the man at a hot tea stand, so he put ice cubes in it and it sold like crazy.
In reality, the hamburger, hot dog and iced tea were all incredibly popular long before the 1904 World's Fair. Unlike the ice cream cone, which many may have tried for the first time at the Fair, each of the three other food items had gained their own notoriety.
We can VERIFY: No, the ice cream cone, hamburger, hot dog and iced tea weren't invented at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis.
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