Aviation Blog Post #4- Orville & Wilbur's Favorite Recipes

Last week while browsing through the archives to find my aviation story, I stumbled upon a cookbook called "Cooking with the Wrights."  It was filled with recipes that the Wright family would make for all different occasions.  I thought this was quite interesting, and very cool! I browsed through the book for awhile, and I found two recipes in particular that seemed to be special to the Wright brothers, and I thought that I would share them here.

Let's start with Wilbur.  The recipe I found for him was titled "Wilbur's Favorite Cake."  According to the book, Wilbur had simple tastes.  So simple, in fact, that this recipe was originally from the back of the Royal Baking Powder bag!  It called for shortening, sugar, eggs, vanilla, flour, baking powder, salt, and milk, all very common ingredients that most of us could find in our parents' homes today, if not our own.  The instructions were very simple, as all it required was for the sugar to be added to the shortening, beating the mixture and adding eggs one at a time, and sifting in the dry ingredients, alternating every once in awhile to add in milk.  Then, all Wilbur had to do was bake the cake and enjoy! I think it's pretty fun to imagine one of the fathers of aviation throwing down in the kitchen!

Orville's recipe, however, was much more complicated.  It actually involved one of his infamous inventions-- an ice cream freezer.  In a letter from 1926, Katharine talks about the machine, noting that Orville "rigged" it up and they hadn't quite figured out how to use it-- quite typical of Orville to do so!  Nonetheless, he was able to operate the machine, and he had a chocolate ice cream recipe to go along with it.  It only calls for sugar, unsweetened chocolate, vanilla, and cream.  The instructions were a little more complicated, however, as trying to work the ice cream machine was required.  Basically, Orville would mix the sugar with milk to moisten, add the chocolate, and stir over heat until smooth.  Then he would add the vanilla and let it cool.  The ice cream would go in the freezer, where it would stay for about 45 minutes.  Then he would beat it with an electric mixer, return it to the freezer for half an hour, and then use the electric mixer one more time to break down the ice crystals.

Like I said, Orville's recipe was quite complicated compared to Wilbur's.  I think this contrast is a lovely depiction of the brothers' personalities, and a very interesting insight to the minds of the brothers who created aviation for what it is today!