Holiday Calendar

National Mac and Cheese Day

Next celebratedWednesday, July 14, 2027

The pan you bake and the box you tear open both count on National Mac and Cheese Day. Make whichever one you grew up on, and let it settle a moment before it goes to the table.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEJuly 14
OBSERVED INUnited States
CATEGORYFood
SUBCATEGORYPasta
ORIGIN

Community Origin

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

Adopted by common use, not by anyone's decree.

No founder, proclamation or first observance has been traced for National Mac and Cheese Day. The name appears in no volume of Chase's Calendar of Events digitised by HathiTrust and in no document indexed by the Federal Register, and the earliest archived holiday-listing page found for it was captured in 2018, which dates the listing rather than the day.

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INTRO

Kraft changed the recipe and mentioned it later

A recipe for boiled pasta buried under grated cheese and butter sits in The Forme of Cury, an English cookery roll its 1780 editor dates to about 1390 and credits to the master-cooks of King Richard II. Cut a thin sheet of dough into pieces, boil it well, then "take chese and grate it and butter cast bynethen and above".

Six centuries later, nothing in that has needed fixing. National Mac and Cheese Day is a day for the dish those instructions describe.

What has moved is everything around it. A Manchester confectioner finished hers with cream, and a guest at a president's table took the filling for shallots.

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ORIGINS

Mac and Cheese Day history

INTRODUCTION

Elizabeth Raffald was a confectioner near the Exchange in Manchester. In 1769 she printed a book of her own receipts, and page 261 carries one for macaroni with Parmesan cheese.

Hers is a cream sauce rather than a cheese sauce. Four ounces of macaroni go in to boil, then into a pan with a gill of cream and butter rolled in flour. Toasted Parmesan goes over the top at the end, and she tells the cook to send it out on a water plate, "for it soon goes cold".

CHAPTER 01

What Jefferson actually had

The American half of the story usually starts with Thomas Jefferson, and Monticello says plainly that he was not the first to bring macaroni, with or without cheese, to America, and did not invent the recipe often credited to him. Pasta baked with cheese was already popular in France by the time he arrived there in 1784.

A macaroni recipe does survive in his own handwriting: six eggs, two wine glasses of milk, two pounds of flour, a little salt. Monticello adds that it was most likely dictated to him by one of the enslaved chefs in his kitchen, James Hemings or Edith Hern Fossett.

CHAPTER 02

A pie called macaroni

In 1802 a guest at the President's house wrote down the whole dinner. Rice soup, beef, turkey, mutton, ham, veal, fried eggs, and then "a pie called macaroni", which he took to be full of onions or shallots.

Meriwether Lewis told him there were none in it and that the dish was Italian. The verdict in the journal stood anyway: it "tasted very strong, and not agreeable".

By 1838 it had settled into a household job. The Virginia Housewife tells the cook to boil macaroni in milk and water, layer it with cheese and butter "as in the polenta", and bake it the same way.

CHAPTER 03

Nineteen cents, nine minutes

Kraft put the dish in a box in 1937. It sold for 19 cents and held four servings, under a slogan that promised a meal for four in nine minutes.

National Mac and Cheese Day sits at the end of that line. Nobody has been identified as its author, and the July 14 date has no explanation on the record.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Mac and Cheese Day

KITCHENS

The handwriting is Jefferson's. The cooking knowledge, most likely, was not.

The macaroni recipe in Jefferson's handwriting was most likely dictated to him by an enslaved cook, according to Monticello. It names two candidates, James Hemings and Edith Hern Fossett, and prints them beside the recipe itself.

RATIONING

Wartime scarcity made the box a staple

During the Second World War a shopper could get two boxes for a single ration point. With meat hard to come by, a cheap main dish that needed only milk and butter became a fixture of the American pantry.

LABELS

A recipe change announced, then made quietly

Kraft took the synthetic colors and artificial preservatives out of the blue box in December 2015 and said nothing until the following March, by which point it said it had sold over 50 million boxes. The Environmental Working Group's answer was that the new box scored no better in its database, because the saturated fat and sodium were untouched.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Macrows enters an English cookery roll

The recipe is headed Macrows, and the roll it sits in is dated to about this year by the editor who first printed it.

Raffald prints a Parmesan version

Elizabeth Raffald's Manchester cookbook boils macaroni tender, dresses it with cream and butter, and covers it with toasted Parmesan.

Macaroni pie at the President's house

A guest wrote down the whole dinner and judged the macaroni pie very strong and not agreeable.

The Virginia Housewife bakes it

Mary Randolph's book tells American cooks to layer boiled macaroni with cheese and butter and bake it as they would polenta.

Kraft puts it in a box

Kraft's boxed macaroni and cheese arrived at 19 cents for four servings.

Kraft says the recipe changed

The company said it had swapped the artificial dyes the previous December and sold over 50 million boxes before mentioning it.

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Mac and Cheese Day

Mock macaroni was made from crackers

The Virginia Housewife offers a substitute in the recipe right after the real one: break crackers into small pieces, soak them in milk until soft, and use them in place of macaroni.

The 1780 editor gave up on the recipe's title

Samuel Pegge footnoted the heading Macrows to say it corresponds nearly enough with maccheroni, "so that this title seems to want mending, and yet I know not how to do it to satisfaction".

Naples disappointed one of Jefferson's correspondents

William Short wrote to him from Rome in 1789, after seventeen days in Naples, that they had one of the best cooks in the city and he never could give them macaroni they thought eatable.

In Canada the blue box has a different name

Kraft's own 2015 announcement of the recipe change refers to the Canadian product as Kraft Dinner, or KD, and gave it a separate deadline for dropping synthetic colors.

Three spices replaced the artificial dyes

Yellow 5 and 6 went out of the American blue box and paprika, annatto and turmeric went in, picked by the company to hold the box's signature color.

We'd invite Americans to try our new recipe, but they most likely already have.
Greg GuidottiVice President of Meals, Kraft Heinz

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Mac and Cheese Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Bake it the 1838 way

Boil macaroni in milk and water until tender, then layer it in a dish with cheese and butter. Mary Randolph sends it into a quick oven for twenty or thirty minutes.

TRY

Try the cream version from 1769

Elizabeth Raffald boils four ounces of macaroni tender, then finishes it with a gill of cream and butter rolled in flour. Toasted Parmesan goes over the top, and it wants eating straight away.

READ

Read the recipe in Jefferson's own hand

Monticello publishes the transcription, down to the eggs, the milk and the little salt. It also says what the record shows about who probably supplied it.

COOK

Cook a box beside a scratch pan

Make a pan from pasta, cheese and butter, then prepare a box alongside it. Taste them one after the other and see which one your memory was actually holding.

ASK

Ask what cheese is in the one you order

The cheese is what separates one version from another. Raffald finished hers with toasted Parmesan, while Randolph layered hers in and put the dish in the oven.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Mac and Cheese?

1 / 8

In which book does the recipe headed "Macrows" appear?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance, the Federal Register carries no document naming it, and no official status was found elsewhere, so it is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

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

10sources
7primary records
9independently dated
Primary records
Internet Archive1780
The Forme of Cury: A Roll of Ancient English Cookery Compiled about A.D. 1390
The Macrows recipe and the 1780 editor's footnote calling it maccheroni.
View source
Internet Archive1769
Elizabeth Raffald, The Experienced English House-Keeper
Her 1769 Manchester recipe for macaroni with Parmesan, and the water plate.
View source
HathiTrust1838
Mary Randolph, The Virginia Housewife; or, Methodical Cook, page 84
The baked macaroni recipe, and the cracker substitute printed beside it.
View source
HathiTrust1888
Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, volume 2, page 71
A diner's own account of the macaroni pie served at the President's house.
View source
National Archives, Founders Online1789-02-11
From William Short to Thomas Jefferson, 11 February 1789
Short's letter from Rome, including his verdict on the macaroni in Naples.
View source
Kraft Foods Group2015-04-20
Iconic Kraft Macaroni & Cheese to Remove Synthetic Colors and Artificial Preservatives in the U.S. in 2016
The company's own announcement of the recipe change and the colors replacing the dyes.
View source
Business Wire, via the Internet Archive2016-03-07
Kraft Mac & Cheese Conducted World's Largest "Blind Taste Test"
Kraft's disclosure that the reformulated boxes had already been on sale for months.
View source
Additional coverage
Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Monticello
Macaroni, Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia
What the Jefferson record shows about macaroni and cheese, and who likely cooked it.
View source
Smithsonian Magazine2020
How Boxed Mac and Cheese Became a Pantry Staple
The 1937 launch price, the nine-minute slogan, and the wartime ration point.
View source
Environmental Working Group2016
The Real Deal Behind Kraft's "New" Mac & Cheese
The argument that the reformulated box scores no better on fat and sodium.
View source
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