Holiday Calendar

National Strawberry Ice Cream Day

Next celebratedFriday, January 15, 2027

National Strawberry Ice Cream Day puts a summer flavor on a winter calendar, which is most of its charm. Pick up a pint on the way home, or churn your own and let it soften a minute before you serve it.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEJanuary 15
OBSERVED INUnited States
CATEGORYFood
SUBCATEGORYIce Cream
ORIGIN

Community Origin

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

The date has been on holiday calendars since at least 2013.

No founder, sponsor or establishing record for National Strawberry Ice Cream Day has been located. The earliest archived listing found for it was captured in November 2013, and it already gives the date as January 15.

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

The flavor the FDA reaches for when it needs an example

The federal standard for ice cream never says how much strawberry a strawberry ice cream has to contain. It sets a floor for milkfat, for total solids, even for what a gallon has to weigh. For fruit it sets no minimum at all.

What it sets instead is a trigger. Under 21 CFR 135.110, once a maker uses artificial fruit flavor alongside real fruit, the artificial flavor is deemed to predominate when the fruit in a berry ice cream comes to less than 6 percent of the finished weight.

At that point the front of the carton can no longer just say strawberry. It has to say artificially flavored. National Strawberry Ice Cream Day belongs to a flavor whose name on the carton is a statement about flavoring, not a promise about fruit.

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ORIGINS

Strawberry Ice Cream Day history

CHAPTER 01

A supper list in 1863

The phrase shows up in American newspapers long before any of the rules did, and the earliest match in the California Digital Newspaper Collection is a menu. On 18 November 1863 the Daily Alta California printed a list of cakes and ices under the heading THE RUSSIAN BALL, and strawberry ice cream sits in the middle of it, beside the lemon ice cream and the meringues.

Search the same collection from 1846 and nothing comes back for the phrase before that night. The day named after the flavor leaves no comparable trail, and no founder or establishing record for it has been located.

CHAPTER 02

The word the rulebook keeps writing down

When the Food and Drug Administration needs to explain what the word flavored means on a label, it reaches for one fruit again and again. Its flavor-labeling rule works through strawberry flavor, natural strawberry flavor, natural and artificial strawberry flavor, and artificial strawberry flavor, then uses strawberry shortcake to explain what a characterizing ingredient is.

The ice cream standard does the same. Its own naming examples run Vanilla flavored and Strawberry flavored, then strawberry and artificial strawberry flavor.

CHAPTER 03

The color that does not have to be listed

Federal interest in food color started long before there was an ice cream standard. The Food and Drug Administration's own history records that the Agriculture Department's Bureau of Chemistry began researching the use of colors in food in 1881, and that butter and cheese were the first foods the federal government authorized anyone to color artificially.

That lineage is still in the rules. Ice cream joins butter and cheese as one of three foods whose added color, under 21 CFR 101.22, need not be declared in the ingredient list at all, unless a separate color regulation requires it. The rule adds that listing it anyway is recommended.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Strawberry Ice Cream Day

DEADLINE

The deadline for Red No. 3 in food lands on this holiday's date.

In January 2025 the FDA granted a petition and repealed the regulations allowing FD&C Red No. 3 in food, citing data that the additive induces cancer in male rats. The order takes effect on January 15, 2027, which is this day. FDA describes the dye as one found in candy, cakes and cupcakes, cookies, frozen desserts, and frostings and icings.

FAT

How rich the tub is changes what you smell

A 2002 study in the Journal of Food Science put five strawberry ice creams, at zero, nine and eighteen percent fat, past an electronic nose, human noses and a gas chromatograph. All three picked up the difference. The headspace of the nonfat sample was very different from the rest, and the nine and eighteen percent samples were told apart too, while swapping dairy fat for vegetable fat made no significant difference.

SHERBET

Next door, the same number is a real floor

Strawberry sherbet is governed by its own standard, and that one does set a minimum. Under 21 CFR 135.140 a berry sherbet must be at least 6 percent fruit by weight, full stop, with no condition attached. Same figure, different legal force: in a sherbet it is a promise about fruit, and in an ice cream it is only a rule about what the label has to admit.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Strawberry Ice Cream Day by the Numbers

10
Mentions of strawberry in FDA's flavor rule
10%
Minimum milkfat in US ice cream
4.5 lb
Minimum weight of a gallon of ice cream
1.6 lb
Minimum total solids per gallon

TIMELINE

Timeline

Strawberry on a ball supper list

The Daily Alta California of 18 November prints strawberry ice cream on the supper list for the Russian Ball, the earliest match the phrase returns in a search of the California papers back to 1846.

The government looks at food color

The US Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Chemistry begins research on the use of colors in food. Federal oversight of color additives dates from this decade.

Seven colors make the first list

The Department of Agriculture issues Food Inspection Decision 76, containing a list of seven straight colors approved for use in food.

Congress writes in the Delaney Clause

The Color Additive Amendments bar the listing of any color additive shown to induce cancer in people or animals, and put the roughly 200 color additives already in commercial use onto a provisional list.

The ice cream standard settles

The standard of identity for ice cream and frozen custard is published on 3 February. Its citation line still begins there, with amendments running through 1998.

FDA pulls Red No. 3 from food

The agency grants a color additive petition from the Center for Science in the Public Interest and others, and repeals the regulations that had permitted FD&C Red No. 3 in food.

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Strawberry Ice Cream Day

The rule misspells its own strawberry example

Read 21 CFR 135.110 closely and one label example comes out as artifically flavored Strawberry. The typo appears exactly once in the section. The correct spelling appears four times.

The insect color gets written back onto the label

Ice cream can leave added color off the ingredient list. Cochineal extract and carmine are carved back in: since January 2009, any food including butter, cheese and ice cream containing either has to declare it by name. Carmine is drawn from an insect, Dactylopius coccus costa.

Strawberry outran chocolate in the California papers

Searching the California Digital Newspaper Collection from 1846 to 1900 returns 472 matches for vanilla ice cream, 388 for strawberry ice cream and 252 for chocolate ice cream. Those are counts of matches in one state's newspapers, not of anything anyone ate.

The dye on the way out has been approved since 1931

Erythrosine, now called FD&C Red No. 3, was already approved for food by 1931, when fifteen straight colors were listed. FDA counts it among six of the seven colors in use today that were already on that list.

Sugar is why you can get a spoon into it

Sugars depress the freezing point of an ice cream mix, so plenty of the water never freezes. At a typical serving temperature of minus 16 degrees Celsius, only about 72 percent of the water in ice cream is ice.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Strawberry Ice Cream Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Read the two words in front of strawberry

Pick up a carton and look at the flavor name on the front. If it reads artificially flavored strawberry, the federal naming rule has decided that the artificial flavor is doing the work. If the word strawberry stands there alone, no artificial flavor is simulating it.

HUNT

Hunt for carmine in the ingredients

Scan the ingredient list for cochineal extract or carmine. Those two have to be named when they are used, so finding one tells you where some of the color came from, and not finding them tells you nothing either way.

TASTE

Taste a full fat scoop against a nonfat one

Buy the richest strawberry ice cream you can find and the leanest, and smell both before you taste them. Smell first, because that is where the difference between them shows up soonest.

MACERATE

Macerate the berries before you churn

If you are making it at home, cut the strawberries, toss them with sugar and let them sit for half an hour before they go into the mix. That extra sugar is what stops the finished ice cream setting too hard to get a spoon into.

PUT

Put a strawberry sherbet next to it

Buy one of each and eat them side by side. The sherbet is legally required to carry real berry fruit and the ice cream is not, so you are tasting a difference the labels are quietly telling you about.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Strawberry Ice Cream?

1 / 5

Under the US standard of identity, how much strawberry must a strawberry ice cream contain?

Answer

No. The Federal Register carries no document under that name, and no legal or official status for it was found in the indexes checked.

COLOPHON

Sources

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

10sources
8primary records
6independently dated
Primary records
U.S. Government Publishing Office2025
21 CFR 135.110, Ice cream and frozen custard
The federal standard of identity for ice cream: the composition floors for milkfat, total solids and weight per gallon, the naming ladder that decides when a characterizing flavor must be called flavored or artificially flavored, the fruit percentages at which an artificial fruit flavor is deemed to predominate, and the label-declaration carve-out for artificial color.
View source
U.S. Government Publishing Office2025
21 CFR 101.22, Foods; labeling of spices, flavorings, colorings and chemical preservatives
FDA's general flavor and color labeling rule for all foods, including the worked examples that use strawberry throughout and the paragraph allowing butter, cheese and ice cream to leave added coloring out of the ingredient list.
View source
U.S. Government Publishing Office2025
21 CFR 73.100, Cochineal extract; carmine
The listing regulation for cochineal extract and carmine, identifying carmine as a lake of the coloring principles obtained from the insect Dactylopius coccus costa and requiring that either be declared by name on food labels including ice cream.
View source
Office of the Federal Register2025-01-16
Color Additive Petition From Center for Science in the Public Interest, et al.; Request To Revoke Color Additive Listing for Use of FD&C Red No. 3 in Food and Ingested Drugs
FDA's final order repealing the color additive regulations that permitted FD&C Red No. 3 in food and ingested drugs, granted under the Delaney Clause on data showing the additive induces cancer in male rats, with compliance dates of January 15, 2027 for food and January 18, 2028 for ingested drugs.
View source
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Color Additives History
FDA's own chronology of federal color regulation, from the Bureau of Chemistry's 1881 research and Food Inspection Decision 76 in 1907 through the list of fifteen colors approved by 1931 and the Color Additive Amendments of 1960.
View source
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
FD&C Red No. 3
FDA's description of the dye, the food categories it turns up in, and the reformulation deadlines that follow the revocation.
View source
California Digital Newspaper Collection, University of California, Riverside
Search: strawberry ice cream, 1846 to 1870
The single earliest match for the phrase in the collection, in the Daily Alta California of 18 November 1863, on the supper list of an article headed The Russian Ball.
View source
U.S. Government Publishing Office2025
21 CFR 135.140, Sherbet
The standard of identity for sherbet, which unlike the ice cream standard sets a flat minimum fruit content of not less than 6 percent for berry sherbets.
View source
Additional coverage
Journal of Food Science2002
Electronic and human nose in the detection of aroma differences between strawberry ice cream of varying fat content
A sensory and headspace study of five strawberry ice creams at zero, nine and eighteen percent fat, finding that fat level changes the aroma released while the type of fat does not.
View source
University of Guelph, Department of Food Science
Finding Science in Ice Cream
H. Douglas Goff's account of the physics of an ice cream mix, including freezing point depression by sugars and the share of water still unfrozen at serving temperature.
View source
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