National Ice Cream Sandwich Day falls on Monday, August 2, 2027, and its treat started as a penny snack on New York’s streets. Even Wall Street brokers lined up for one.
Date of National Ice Cream Sandwich Day
August 2, every year. The person who created the food day isn’t on record, though the treat’s own story is well documented.
From Bowery Pushcarts to Wall Street
Word researcher Barry Popik traces the sandwich to New York in the summer of 1900. Early reports came from Wall Street and the Lower East Side.
Cake-and-ice-cream versions came first. An 1894 New Hampshire cookbook, Ralph Green’s Receipt Book, told cooks to spread ice cream on thin slices of pound or sponge cake.
In 1898, the Cincinnati Enquirer praised “ice cream sandwiches, from slices of ice cream between lengths of cake.” It called them new and palatable.
Uptown, ice cream meant something fancier. Wealthy Manhattanites bought it from confectioners, who molded it into shapes like pineapples and asparagus spears for dinner parties, Edible Manhattan recounts.
A New York street craze
One early street report came from Fulton Street in June 1900. A vendor there called his product an “ice cream sandwich,” though it looked more like coffee cake with a dab of cream.
By July, a New York Tribune reporter found a seller offering tiny slabs of ice cream between water wafers for one cent each.
Business boomed near the stock exchange. One young vendor at Nassau and Wall streets charged one, two or three cents, and brokers bought them during the week.
A Bowery pushcart sold its version for a penny, made with a thin milk biscuit pressed into a tin mold. Some sellers were so busy they wanted exact change.
Uptown and patented
Fancy restaurants caught on fast. In 1901, an uptown spot served diamond-shaped pieces of sponge cake, trimmed of their brown edges, around the ice cream.
New York’s elite dining rooms even plated them and handed out ice cream forks.
Speed mattered to the street sellers. Tin devices called “cracker holders” made assembly faster in 1901. A 1916 patent covered a mold for “two, three or more” sandwiches at once.
Why This Treat Deserves a Day
The sandwich solved a street-food problem. Before it, many New York buyers got “penny licks,” glasses they licked clean and handed back for a rinse in a pail of water.
Compared with the penny lick, the 1900 sandwich needed no shared glass, and customers could eat it on the move.
It crossed New York’s class lines quickly, too. Reports that summer had everyone from bootblacks to bankers buying them.
Make a 1900-Style Sandwich
- Use graham wafers, the choice of a John Street vendor in 1900.
- Try thin milk biscuits for the Bowery pushcart version.
- Go uptown style with diamond-cut sponge cake, edges trimmed off.
- Slice pound cake thin and spread it with ice cream, as Ralph Green’s 1894 recipe suggests.
- Press the filling into a mold for even sandwiches, like the tin cracker holders of 1901.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did British cooks make ice cream sandwiches too?
Yes. Charles Herman Senn’s London book Ices, and how to make them included “Denises Glacés,” made with ice wafers.
What was a hokey pokey?
A street ice cream sold as a paper-wrapped slice about two inches square and half an inch thick.
Did every vendor charge a penny?
No. A John Street seller using graham wafers asked two to three cents, depending on size.
When did a newspaper first call it “A New Sandwich”?
Around 1899, when the New York Mail and Express ran a story with that headline about a Bowery pushcart.