Rocky Road: Why It Sounds So Dang Delicious

Science Diction

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Friday, Society & Culture, Science, Origin, Culture, Words, History, Word, Language

4.8 • 610 Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2020

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

Rocky Road is just a good name for an ice cream flavor. So good, in fact, that two ice cream institutions have dueling claims to Rocky Road’s invention. It’s a story of alleged confessions and a whole lot of ice cream-fueled drama. If it were just the flavor that made Rocky Road so special, every company could have just made their own concoction of nuts, chocolate, and marshmallows, named it “Muddy Street” or “Pebble Lane,” and called it a day. But there’s a linguistic reason why Rocky Road just sounds so dang delicious—and it’s studied by linguists and marketers alike. Fenton's Creamery in Oakland, California, one of the institutions that lays claim to inventing Rocky Road. (Wikimedia Commons) In this episode, we mention the Bouba Kiki Effect. Imagine two shapes: One is a pointy, jagged polygon, the other an ameboid-like splotch. Which shape would you name “Bouba,” and which would you name “Kiki?” In study after study, 90% of people agree—the pointy shape is “Kiki” and the rounded shape is “Bouba.” This so-called “Bouba-Kiki Effect” holds in many languages, and has even been demonstrated with toddlers. But why the near-universal agreement? Cognitive psychologists like Kelly McCormick have several theories. Watch this Science Friday video to learn more. Guest: Alissa Greenberg is a freelance journalist. Dan Jurafsky is a professor of linguistics at Stanford, and the author of The Language of Food. Will Leben is professor emeritus of linguistics at Stanford, and is the former director of linguistics at Lexicon Branding. Footnotes And Further Reading: Read Alissa Greenberg’s full (highly entertaining) story of the history of Rocky Road ice cream. The Language of Food by Dan Jurafsky is a word nerd’s dream, and contains more about his experiment on cracker and ice cream brand names. Credits: Science Diction is hosted and produced by Johanna Mayer. Our editor and producer is Elah Feder. We had additional story editing from Nathan Tobey. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with help from Danya AbdelHameid. Daniel Peterschmidt is our composer. Sound design and mastering by Chris Wood. Our Chief Content Officer is Nadja Oertelt.

Transcript

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0:00.0	A few years ago, Alyssa Greenberg was sharing an ice cream Sunday with some friends at Fenton's Creamery in Oakland, California.
0:07.5	They have the kind of Sundays that are like dripping down the sides and are like covered in fudge and whipped cream and like like that are like almost obscene.
0:20.5	Fenton's is an Oakland institution.
0:22.5	Leans really hard into the nostalgia factor.
0:25.9	Vinyl booths, an old-fashioned soda fountain, black and white photos hanging on the wall.
0:31.4	So Alyssa picked up the menu.
0:33.6	And on the little blurb in the back of the menu for Fenton's, it says the birthplace of Rocky Road.
0:41.1	Rocky Road was invented here.
0:42.9	And I was like, wait, what?
0:46.7	The Rocky Road.
0:49.3	Chocolate ice cream, nuts, mini marshmallows, inventing this American classic, truly acclaimed to fame.
0:57.4	And then I Googled it, and Google said that dryers invented Rocky Road. And I was like,
1:03.8	ooh, the game is afoot. So it's dryers, this major ice cream brand, now owned by Nestle,
1:10.6	versus Little Fenton's Creamery, both claiming that they were the ones who invented Rocky Road.
1:16.7	And I get why companies would want to claim Rocky Road as their own. It's not just the flavor, because anyone could take nuts, chocolate, marshmallows, throw them all together in an ice cream and call it muddy street or poorly paved driveway. But it probably wouldn't inspire the same devotion.
1:35.3	There's something about that name, Rocky Road. It is just that good. And there's science to that.
1:43.9	From Science Friday, this is Science Diction. I'm
1:46.7	Johanna Mayer. Today, we're talking about Rocky Road and why it just sounds so dang delicious.
2:14.2	Thank you. Both Fenton's and Dyer's have pretty straightforward stories for how they invented Rocky Road.
2:20.0	In Dyer's version, it was William Dyer himself, who one day in 1929 decided to make an ice cream with nuts, chocolate, and marshmallows. But at the time,
2:26.6	marshmallows did not yet come in small versions. They came in sheets. So he took his wife's
2:33.6	pinking shears and cut the marshmallows into four pieces and then stuffed them in the ice cream.
	...

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