[upbeat playful music] How do we blend it?

Okay, so this is a giant blender.

-Yeah.

-Oh!

[blender whirring] Rocky road ice cream.

People love that combination of crunchy almonds, springy marshmallows, and come on, we all love chocolate, don't we?

But honestly, I'm more of a mint chocolate-chip gal myself, but I can't lie.

Looking at this scoop, it's made me reconsider my favorite.

The story behind it is a little "rocky."

Too on the nose?

But it is!

There's the Great Depression, two world wars, a fire, and two friends in Oakland in the middle of it, arguing over who came up with the idea first.

All that hype is making me hungry.

We're here on the other side of the bay in San Francisco at the Ice Cream Bar, a 1930s' style soda fountain shop to learn more about their unique take on rocky road ice cream.

Let's check it out.

I wanted to open a real neighborhood place and also make everything from scratch.

I have been trying to remember if there was ever a day that we did not have ice cream in the house.

I think, you know, in the Midwest you have two freezers, three freezers.

Coincidentally, the freezer is where our story starts because you can't have ice cream without being 5 degrees Fahrenheit, or -15 degrees Celsius, or really, really cold.

Ice cream was still pretty new in the '20s in particular because refrigeration and freezing was new, and so suddenly it was something that you could conceivably have in your home rather than this unbelievable luxury.

Our rocky road expert makes a great point.

The 1920s represent a time when most people are still using blocks of ice and ice boxes to keep food cold.

But there was ice cream well before that.

The first record of something that resembles today's ice cream dates all the way back to seventh century China when King Tang of Shang enjoyed a mix of buffalo milk, ice, and camphor--a type of plant.

Flavored ices and ice creams have been coveted for thousands of years, but they were really hard to get, right?

So up until a few hundred years ago, you used to have to wait for a snowstorm to make ice cream or climb a mountain to get ice.

Or you could fill your basement with snow and blocks of ice in the winter and hope it didn't melt before summer.

Luckily, we have an industrial kitchen at the Ice Cream Bar, so no snow shoes necessary today.

I mean, from what we found, finding the answer to the ice cream part of rocky road really depends on when you want to start counting.

Seventh-century China?

Marco Polo?

The 1500s with French Queen Catherine de Medici?

The 1770s?

Thomas Jefferson's trip back from France with a bunch of ice-cream equipment in tow?

It's kind of a choose- your-own-frosty adventure, but it all starts with some version of the same basic ingredients.

So we start with a delicious base of eggs, milk, sugar.

Okay, and then so what do we go from there?

(Juliet) T hen we have the dark and the milk chocolate, a little bit of salt, and then make our own marshmallow fluff that we fold into the ice cream.

Mixing those iconic ingredients has its own long history, but what we do know is it was a popular candy mix before it was ever thought to be mixed into ice cream.

Annabelle's does have the Rocky Road Candy Bar.

That company has only been around since 1950.

We need to go back a little further when William Dreyer made his way over to the United States.

William Dreyer, he comes over from Germany.

The story at least is that he's working on a steam ship.

He was asked to make frozen dessert for the captain of the steamship and made this water ice.

Gets to Oakland eventually, teams up with candy-maker Joseph Edy in 1926.

(Cecilia) So it was that team-up of the candy maker, Edy, and ice cream man, Dreyer, resulting in the rocky road that we know today.

William Dreyer wasn't the only person building his ice-cream empire at the time.

(Alissa) Fenton's Creamery is this extremely beloved institution on one of the main drags in Oakland.

Fenton's claim to fame is that George Farren was the candy maker that worked at Fenton's Creamery.

He was like, "Oh, you know what we should do is put this candy that I made, which is very popular, into our ice cream and start selling it."

Fenton's had a large-scale fire 20 years ago that destroyed a lot of their records, meaning we can't confirm who put rocky road candy into ice cream first.

But what we do know is this idea of candy and ice cream was a huge deal at the time it was being introduced to the public.

More on that in just a bit, but first, we've got some marshmallows to fluff.

We start with fresh egg whites.

And then we beat those to like a softer medium peak.

[mixer whirring] What goes in next?

A sugar syrup, a hot sugar syrup.

And then you add this, the salt.

And then just pure vanilla?

Yep, vanilla extract.

Do regular marshmallows have vanilla extract in them?

-Usually.

-...yours.

But not enough.

-I like to add more.

-Okay, great.

-More vanilla and salt.

-Nice.

(Cecilia) Marshmallows were originally made from the root of the mallow plant.

It has been cultivated by the Greeks and Egyptians for its medicinal properties like soothing sore throats and healing wounds.

The Egyptians literally couldn't ge t enough of this stuff, so much so that the treat was reserved for gods and royalty.

Then the 1800s came around, and the French began using modified corn starch, egg whites, and eventually gelatin instead of the hard-to-extract root to create something that's much closer to the marshmallows we know today.

By the early 1900s, the modern marshmallow had made its way to the U.S., which was a pivotal time for something so decadent to make its debut.

I think rocky road stood out even more during the Great Depression when it was created.

Most foods really, they got worse, but suddenly ice cream got better if you could afford it.

It was a big contrast to everything else that was going on.

Hey, it's not called "rocky road" for nothing.

World War I recently ended, the stock market crash is on the horizon, and prohibition is in full swing.

According to Dreyers, the name "rocky road" comes from the hard times that folks were going through.

Each of these events came together to create the perfect environment for this sweet treat.

Sounds like there wouldn't have been a better time for ice cream to help ease folks' struggles.

When alcohol was outlawed in the United States, a lot of early American breweries pivoted from making beer and alcohol to making ice cream.

There's really a few reasons for that.

You know, one, they already had the infrastructure of refrigeration and the facilities.

The other is ice cream during prohibition really stood in for alcohol as sort of a comfort food.

(Cecilia) Tell me more about the style of this spot.

Like when you walk in, it has a very specific feel and vibe, so what did you want to do?

It sort of came about when I found the vintage back bar.

That's the style that I like, 1930s, streamline modern, and so I wanted to just kind of do everything the old-fashioned way, just because that's actually something new to a lot of people now.

Prohibition helped popularize ice cream.

The other era that really boosted ice cream was World War II.

The ice cream industry tried to make that happen during World War I.

The infrastructure really just wasn't there yet.

Most countries were on a rationing system, but the United States doubled down on ice cream.

And they said, "You know what?

"We're going to make sure that all of our soldiers fighting over seas have ice cream."

And really for the first time in history, they recognized the role of food in war, not just for calories, but for comfort.

So how long does this base sit on the stove for?

To almost a boil.

Okay, so you had the sugar, milk, you start with that.

And cream and eggs.

And then they're gonna pour straight into the chocolate, so then we blend it.

-[blender whirring] -Oh!

Chocolate fountain.

(Cecilia) So while we blend that and get it ready for the ice cream machine, I really can't stop thinking about who actually invented rocky road first.

So much of the research and history says that there's no real way to know who's first.

(Alissa) My theory, these were two friends who were in the same business, really close to each other, like, pretty tight.

And one of them probably had the idea and shared it with the other, and they both did it.

If it was competitive, it probably didn't cause bad blood.

I think it just speaks to the way business culture has evolved for us away from these, like, mom-and-pop stores.

There's so many contributions that helped make ice cream an American staple for the better part of a century.

To be quite honest, it matters much less to me on "who made it first?"

rather than "is it good?"

So the ice cream has come fresh out of the maker?

(Juliet) Yep, gonna level it a little bit and then we pipe the marshmallow, zigzag kind of like that.

Put about a quarter of this on.

(Cecilia) Okay, and then what happens?

We freeze it again?

(Juliet) And we put it back in the freezer to firm up.

And how long do we have to wait?

Hours.

It takes quite a while.

Do you have some ready to go?

-We do.

-All right.

[gentle music] Fluff is the way to go.

What I love is that it's so creamy and flavorful, and I don't like the texture of like squishy marshmallows, but the fluff adds that extra creaminess that you're talking about.

And then the almonds coated in the chocolate is the best part-- that's so good.

And that little bit of salt, it really offsets it.

You must have so many great memories having this spot and so many people coming in to eat ice cream.

Like, do you have any favorite memories that stick out?

(Juliet) Tons of first dates.

We were also once voted one of the best places in San Francisco to break up because it's quick.

It's not all dinner.

We have alcohol, we have ice cream, so doesn't go well, you get dumped, you've got ice cream and alcohol.

You have everything you need.

Okay, well I will keep that in mind the next time I dump somebody.

So I didn't expect to like rocky road so much.

It's definitely won me over after learning its history and having marshmallow fluff with it.

I hope you enjoyed watching this episode as much as I enjoyed eating all the ice cream.

Make sure to like, subscribe, and also comment to let us know where we should go "Beyond the Menu" next.

(announcer) Support for "Beyond the Menu" comes from Krishnan Shah Family Foundation and Friends of KQED Studios.

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