Rocky road ice cream is a chocolate flavor. Though there are variations on the flavor, it is traditionally composed of chocolate ice cream, nuts, and marshmallows. The flavor was created in March 1929 by William Dreyer in Oakland, California when he cut up walnuts and marshmallows with his wife's sewing scissors and added them to his chocolate ice cream in a manner that reflected his partner Joseph Edy's chocolate candy creation incorporating walnuts and marshmallow pieces. Later, the walnuts would be replaced by pieces of toasted almond. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the company gave the flavor its current name "to give folks something to smile about in the midst of the Great Depression."[1] Alternatively, Fentons Creamery in Oakland claims that William Dreyer based his recipe on a Rocky Road-style ice cream flavor invented by his friend, Fentons' George Farren, who blended his own Rocky Road-style candy bar into ice cream; however, Dreyer substituted almonds for walnuts.[2]
The original Rocky Road ice cream used chocolate ice cream with no chocolate chip pieces.[3] Today, Rocky Road can be obtained based on vanilla ice cream with chocolate chips, marshmallows and almonds.