Toasted marshmallow, chocolate and graham crackers come together on Tuesday, August 10, 2027, National S’mores Day. Its real history beats the popular myth.
S’mores Day in the Summer Calendar
Every August 10. The food day’s inventor is unknown.
Its timing fits the treat. Americans were expected to toast about 45 million pounds of marshmallows in one summer, by a 2018 estimate.
Girl Scouts, Somemores and a Fake Founder
For years, the standard story pointed to a 1927 Girl Scout handbook, Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts. National Geographic checked, and that chapter quotes The Wind in the Willows, not an original recipe.
Then there’s “Loretta Scott Crew,” the troop leader often credited with inventing it. She apparently never existed. A Girl Scouts historian found no record of her, and a 2012 blog post first exposed the fakery.
The real trail
Girl Scouts were calling the treat a “Somemore” by 1924, the earliest recorded name, National Geographic reports. It surfaced at leader conferences held that fall in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Behind it was Dorothy Christian “Cookie” Moore, a British Girl Guide leader from Bexhill-on-Sea. She had earned her nickname feeding about 150 men a day in a World War I hospital kitchen.
She arrived in New York in May 1923, at 34, at the Girl Scouts’ invitation. At Camp Andrée Clark in the Hudson River valley, she ran a pioneer unit from a cabin she named Innisfree, after a Yeats poem.
Her leader trainings there became known as “Innisfree Weeks.”
In May 1925, The Girl Scout Leader printed her “Somemore” recipe. It called for graham crackers, chocolate bars and marshmallows toasted until “pale brown and gooey.”
Word spread fast. By the end of 1925, Girl Scouts in at least 22 states were making them, and a Minnesota troop was already spelling it “s’mores.”
The ingredients’ own stories
Marshmallows take their name from the marsh mallow plant, whose root sap people once boiled to soothe sore throats, Smithsonian Magazine notes. Modern ones contain none of it.
Machines changed that candy. By the mid-19th century, factories made marshmallows cheaply enough for penny candy counters.
Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham gave us the cracker. He promoted unsifted whole-wheat flour as part of a strict diet.
Why the S’more Still Matters
The s’more is a Girl Scout invention that outgrew the campfire. The organization’s own “Some-Mores” cookie came out in 1962, and its S’mores boxed cookies were retired in 2025.
Rivals borrowed it, too. The Camp Fire Girls called it “heavenly crisps,” though their 1934 manual admitted the treat was “also known as s’mores.”
Cookie herself returned to England in December 1928 and opened a cooking school in 1936. A 1924 collection of her letters didn’t even use her name.
Make Cookie Moore’s Somemores for National S’mores Day
- Scale the 1925 recipe: 16 graham crackers, 4 chocolate bars and 16 marshmallows serve a group.
- Toast slowly: aim for “pale brown and gooey,” as her recipe put it.
- Split the bar: half a chocolate bar goes in each sandwich.
- Use the old name: call them “Somemores” for the night.
- Tell the true story: share Cookie Moore’s role instead of the Loretta Scott Crew myth.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did a Rochester paper call the treat?
It ran the recipe as “Yummie Dessert.”
How big were the Girl Scouts by 1934?
About 350,000 active members, nearly twice the size of their main rival.
Did a candy company publish its own version?
Yes. One marshmallow maker’s booklet called it a “Marshmallow Graham Cracker Sandwich.”
What might have inspired the s’more?
Possibly Mallomars and MoonPies, both invented in the 1910s.