Apple Parer
Display: Cutting Edge
Culinary Technique: separation
Dimensions: 9" h x 8.5" w x 5" d
Apples provided juice, butter, cider, and sauce in the American diet of the 1800s. Many labor-saving devices with a variety of technical innovations for processing apples were patented from 1850 to 1890. This parer operated like a lathe, with a spring-loaded cutter and six gears to control the blade, which peeled around an apple secured on fork. The fork pushed the peeled apple off at the end of the rotation. Notice the heart-shaped openings in the two opposing gears; the motif appeared in the design of many apple parers of the period.