Holiday Calendar

National Chocolate Parfait Day

Next celebratedSaturday, May 1, 2027

A chocolate parfait is built rather than scooped, cold and layered in a tall glass. Make one at home in the afternoon, or order one out and work your way down to the bottom.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEMay 1
OBSERVED INUnited States
CATEGORYFood
SUBCATEGORYDesserts
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

Chase's Calendar, volume by volume, does not list it.

No founder, proclamation or establishing record for National Chocolate Parfait Day has been located, and the day does not appear in the volumes of Chase's Calendar of Events indexed in HathiTrust.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday
INTRO

The queen's pastry cook put a parfait into English

The layers came last. National Chocolate Parfait Day marks a dessert whose most recognisable feature, the banded glass, is the youngest part of it.

The National Soda Fountain Guide printed the formula in 1913 and described the parfait's original form as ice cream worked together with whipped cream by spoon. The stacked one got a chapter of its own, headed The Layer Parfait. The book called it the latest of the dessert's many shapes, and said it had recently become very popular.

The word arrived from France, where it named a different dessert altogether. Two countries have been using it for two different things ever since.

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ORIGINS

Chocolate Parfait Day history

INTRODUCTION

In 1868 the London publisher Sampson Low, Son, and Marston issued the English edition of Le Livre de Cuisine, the cookbook of Jules Gouffe. Gouffe was chef de cuisine of the Paris Jockey Club. The title page credits the translator too: Alphonse Gouffe, head pastry-cook to Her Majesty the Queen.

In the dessert chapter, between an almond and raspberry ice and a currant bombe, sits a recipe headed Parfait au Cafe. It is not the dessert the name now brings to mind.

CHAPTER 01

A cream frozen in its own mould

Roasted coffee steeped in boiled cream, twelve egg yolks, syrup added in two goes, then a quart of whipped cream folded through. The mixture went into a parfait-mould, closed hermetically and buried in pounded ice and bay salt for two hours. To serve, you turned it out onto a napkin on a dish.

Nothing about that is a glass, and nothing about it is stacked. Escoffier was still classifying parfaits that way in 1907, among the light ices moulded and frozen directly in their moulds rather than churned first.

CHAPTER 02

The soda fountain took the word

Fannie Farmer's first Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, in 1896, carries exactly one parfait, a coffee one, moulded and packed in salt and ice. By the 1919 revision she had three, Angel, Cafe and Maple. Not one of them was chocolate.

The soda fountain was working from a different definition. The 1913 dispenser's manual called the parfait a first cousin to the sundae, set apart by mixing the syrup into the ice cream instead of pouring it over the top. Its chocolate parfait was chocolate ice cream and whipped cream stirred together, with more whipped cream on top.

CHAPTER 03

What the record does and does not hold

In April 1909 the Los Angeles Herald ran a week of household menus with a chocolate parfait as one night's dessert. Searched from 1846, that is the only time those two words appear in California's digitised newspapers before 1910.

The day itself has no paper trail. Its founder, its first observance and the reason for the date have not been traced, while the dessert behind it sits in dated cookbooks anyone can open.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Chocolate Parfait Day

LANGUAGE

From the Latin perfectus. Two countries finished it differently.

France's national lexical resource derives parfait from the Latin perfectus, the past participle of perficere, to complete or to finish. The oldest quotation it holds for the dessert dates from 1869.

CRAFT

The mould is the technique, not the garnish

A parfait was defined by how it froze, in its own mould rather than in a churn, and the old recipes are precise about the packing. Fannie Farmer specified two parts crushed ice to one part rock salt, then three hours of waiting.

SAVOURY

A parfait is not always a dessert

Escoffier's Guide to Modern Cookery carries a Parfait de Foie Gras among its cold dishes, and elsewhere lays slices of one into aspic jelly. He advised buying the parfait ready-made from a good firm rather than attempting it at home.

TIMELINE

Timeline

A parfait in an English cookbook

The London edition of Jules Gouffe's Le Livre de Cuisine prints Parfait au Cafe, frozen in a parfait-mould and turned out onto a dish.

The word enters the dictionary record

France's national lexical resource records its earliest citation for the frozen-dessert sense of parfait, in Quatrelles's Voyage autour du grand monde.

Fannie Farmer prints one parfait

The first Boston Cooking-School Cook Book carries a single Cafe Parfait, moulded and packed in salt and ice.

Escoffier keeps it in the mould

A Guide to Modern Cookery groups parfaits with the light ices that are moulded and frozen directly in their moulds.

Chocolate parfait on a home menu

The Los Angeles Herald runs a week of household menus with a chocolate parfait as one night's dessert course.

A soda fountain formula in print

The National Soda Fountain Guide gives dispensers a chocolate parfait built from chocolate ice cream and whipped cream.

GOOD TO KNOW

National Chocolate Parfait Day Around the World

France

the parfait stayed a frozen cream of a single flavour, set in a mould instead of built in a glass

United States

the parfait became a fountain order, built for a stemmed or narrow glass and finished with whipped cream

Japan

the American style is the mainstream one, and Sapporo made the shime parfait, the parfait that closes a night out, a local habit

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Chocolate Parfait Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Build one in the tallest glass you own

Spoon chocolate ice cream, whipped cream and something crunchy into a narrow glass in bands so the sides show the work. Chill the glass first, and work from the bottom up so each band sits flat.

FREEZE

Freeze the French version in a loaf tin

Make a custard of one flavour, fold whipped cream through it and set it in a mould rather than churning it. Turn it out onto a plate, the way Gouffe's Parfait au Cafe was served.

ORDER

Order one at a counter that still makes them

Look for one on the menu at a diner or an ice cream counter. Ask for the chocolate version and see whether it arrives stacked or stirred.

READ

Read the 1913 formula for yourself

The dispenser's manual that carried the 1913 chocolate parfait formula is free to read online. Its parfait chapter runs a few pages and reads like a recipe card written for a stranger behind a counter.

SAVE

Save it for the end of the night

Sapporo treats a parfait as the thing you have after dinner and after drinks rather than instead of them, and the city says the habit started there. Push yours to the end of the evening and see whether it tastes different there.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Chocolate Parfait Day?

1 / 8

What does the French word parfait mean?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing on record, so schools, banks and offices keep normal hours.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

10sources
10primary records
5independently dated
Internet Archive1868
The Royal Cookery Book (Le Livre de Cuisine), by Jules Gouffe
The 1868 London edition, with the Parfait au Cafe recipe and its parfait-mould.
View source
Internet Archive1913
The National Soda Fountain Guide, by William S. Adkins
A dispenser's manual with a chocolate parfait formula and a chapter on the layer parfait.
View source
CNRTL
Definition de PARFAIT, Tresor de la langue francaise
France's lexical record of the word, its 1869 culinary first use and its Latin root.
View source
Internet Archive1896
The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, by Fannie Merritt Farmer
The 1896 first edition, whose only parfait is a moulded coffee one at page 378.
View source
Internet Archive1919
The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, revised edition
The 1919 revision, with three moulded parfaits, none of them chocolate.
View source
Internet Archive1907
A Guide to Modern Cookery, by A. Escoffier
Classes parfaits among ices frozen in their moulds, and gives a foie gras version.
View source
California Digital Newspaper Collection
Phrase search for chocolate parfait, 1846 to 1910
One hit across the whole run, a Menus for a Week column in the Los Angeles Herald.
View source
Sapporo Parfait Promotion Committee
Sapporo Shime Parfait
The committee's own account of the French and American parfait and Sapporo's late-night version.
View source
Visit Sapporo
Shime Parfait
The city's official travel guide on ending a night out with a parfait.
View source
HathiTrust Digital Library
Full-text search of volumes titled Chase's Calendar
Shows which Chase's volumes the full-text index reaches.
View source
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