Example label

Rocky road label example

Rocky road packed in bags is a compound product. Chocolate, biscuits and marshmallows each carry allergens. Glacé cherries can add sulphites. The marshmallow is the ingredient people forget to open.

Reviewed 23 September 2026 against official guidance.SourcesNot legal advice.

The label

Ingredients (teaching narrative)

Milk chocolate (milk, soya lecithin), digestive biscuits (wheat, barley), marshmallows (beef gelatine), glacé cherries (sulphites).

Milk and soya — chocolate
Wheat and barley — biscuits
Sulphites — cherries if sulphured

What this teaches

Beef gelatine is not one of the 14. Egg-white marshmallows are eggs. Know which marshmallow you used.

Is this PPDS?

Bags of rocky road on a counter or stall are PPDS when you packed them before the customer chose the bag.

Questions

Are marshmallows an allergen?

Gelatine itself is not one of the 14 unless it is fish gelatine. Some marshmallows contain egg white. Read the bag.

Do cherries always mean sulphites?

Glacé and candied cherries often do. Unsulphured fruit does not. Use the fruit you actually mixed in.

Official sources

Everything on this page traces back to these. Where they and we disagree, they are right — tell us and we'll fix it.

Labelling guidance for prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) food productsFood Standards Agency / GOV.UK
Introduction to allergen labelling for PPDS foodFood Standards Agency / GOV.UK