National Chocolate Ice-Cream Day
It's June 7th. If you haven't already grabbed a spoon, consider this your official permission slip.
National Chocolate Ice Cream Day lands every year on June 7, and this year it hits different because just six weeks ago, chocolate officially reclaimed the throne as America's #1 favorite ice cream flavor, knocking vanilla back to second place according to the International Dairy Foods Association's 2026 National Ice Cream Trends Survey (conducted with Morning Consult, across 2,200+ U.S. adults). So today isn't just a fun food holiday. It's a coronation.
Pull up a patio chair. It's time to celebrate!
A History That's Way More Interesting Than You'd Expect
Here's the thing about chocolate ice cream's origin story: it makes vanilla look like the new kid.
Chocolate came first.
In 17th-century Europe, chocolate wasn't something you ate, it was something you drank. Hot chocolate was the fashionable beverage of the era, consumed in coffeehouses from London to Naples. So when early ice cream makers began experimenting with frozen flavors, they naturally turned to the most popular drink of the day. The first recorded frozen chocolate recipe appeared in 1692 in Naples, in a cookbook called The Modern Steward. Vanilla ice cream wouldn't be widely documented until decades later.
By 1775, an Italian physician named Filippo Baldini had taken things a step further. In his treatise De Sorbetti, Dr. Baldini recommended chocolate ice cream as a medical treatment prescribing it for ailments like gout and scurvy. (We're not making this up. And honestly? The prescription doesn't sound half bad.)
Chocolate ice cream crossed the Atlantic and by the early 1800s was being produced alongside early American ice cream operations. When Jacob Fussell, a Baltimore milk dealer, opened the first commercial ice cream factory in 1851, chocolate was among the flavors that became newly accessible to everyday Americans not just the wealthy households with ice houses.
By the time the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis introduced the ice cream cone to a national audience, chocolate was already an established classic. And when President Ronald Reagan officially declared July National Ice Cream Month in 1984, chocolate was one of the flavors that made the whole thing worth celebrating.
Celebrate National Chocolate Ice-cream Day 2026
- Try a 2026-worthy combo. The trend everyone in the food industry is watching right now is Dubai chocolate- the pistachio-tahini filling with crunchy kataifi that went viral and is now moving into ice cream. Some creameries are making chocolate ice cream with a Dubai chocolate swirl. If you can find it, try it.
- Do the rocky road version. Take a bowl of chocolate ice cream and add mini marshmallows, chopped almonds, and a drizzle of hot fudge. Invent your own version. Name it after yourself.
- Share a scoop with someone. The 2026 IDFA survey found that Americans' most iconic ice cream memories involve other people- ice cream trucks, birthday parties, scoop shops with friends. The treat is better with company.
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