the.com/vegetable peeler
A tiny guillotine for carrots that somehow makes grown adults feel competent.
means A hand tool with a slotted blade that shaves a thin layer of skin off fruits and vegetables.
from The modern swivel-blade peeler is usually credited to a mid-20th-century innovation (often tied to the Swiss company Zena/Rex, home of the famous 'Rex peeler' patented in the 1940s), which replaced the old fixed-blade paring knife with a blade that pivots to follow the curve of the vegetable. 'Peel' itself traces back through Old French 'peler' to Latin 'pilare,' meaning to strip of hair, and further back to 'pilus,' hair — so the word's deepest root is about removing a covering, whether fur or skin, long before anyone put a hinge in the blade.
- invented
- circa 1890s, not ancient despite feeling primal
- swivel design
- patented 1947 by Swiss inventor Tornvall
- y-shape origin
- favored by chefs for faster squash and potatoes
- blade angle
- set slightly skewed to shave skin, not flesh