The No. 1 claim I didn't know about ice cream
It's national economic crisis-based, according to Dreyer's (PDF).
At the time of Rocky Road's birth in 1929, almost all ice cream was made in three flavors – vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry – and was always served as sundaes. Dreyer added walnuts (later replaced with almonds) to his chocolate ice cream and, using his wife's sewing shears, cut marshmallows into bite-sized pieces to make the first batch of Rocky Road. Dreyer and Edy picked a flavor name to give folks something to smile about in the face of the Great Depression. Rocky Road became America's first blockbuster flavor and remains one of the best-selling flavors of all time.
I wish there were a few more sources for the naming. As Wikipedia points out, there's at least one alternate story about the ingredients. But Google turns up nothing more … except a book called The Strategic Use of Stories in Organizational Communication and Learning interviews a Dreyer's ethic chief and the author notes on the Rocky Road story, "It's not a long drawn out narrative, yet the imagery is rich and generates associations." Various results in Google News put the invention a few weeks after the stock market crash in '29, but none are sourced.
Building off this story/legend/whatever, Edy's-Dreyer's is now running a contest where you help introduce a national economic crisis-based flavor and get $100,000 to turn around your Rocky Road of a life.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:10 PM
Good to know!! Ice-cream related news, I was in L.L. Bean today and it was love at first sight when I saw this: (I somehow resisted buying it though)
http://icecreamrevolution.com/
This alone could change my Rocky Road of a life (though I wouldn't argue with $100K if it came my way).
May 16th, 2009 at 7:22 AM
I see this as a dangerous gateway for you. First, it's the ice cream ball, then it's the funnel cake maker, and next thing you know it's you and Jack Lalanne doing push-ups in front of a studio audience with a thousand pallets sitting in a Juarez warehouse and those juicers aren't going to sell themselves…
May 16th, 2009 at 7:28 AM
Also, found in Googling funnel cake: NPR Kitchen Window where girls attempt funnel cake when mother isn't home, disaster ensues. It goes on: "Afterward, we got a shovel and buried the funnel cake in the backyard — where, in a rare burst of good judgment, we figured no one would think to look for it. I went back three times to check it, feeling sure some sort of spiral-shaped bare patch would bear witness to our ignominy in future years."
I gotta say, if I bury a funnel cake, the reason I check back is to see if there's a funnel cake tree.
May 17th, 2009 at 6:56 AM
Lol! Funnel cake tree. I like it. Wonder if they'd grow on apartment balconies as well…
June 30th, 2009 at 1:05 AM
[...] dude with a suburban Detroit improv joint who won. His essay got him $100k for his business and, as mentioned here previously, a role in introducing the new Edy's flavor, "Red, White & No More Blues." The [...]