Name/Title
Cast Iron Apple peelerEntry/Object ID
100141Scope and Content
(AI)1. The Cast Iron Device (Foreground Left)
This is an antique mechanical apple peeler (or parer), dating roughly from the 1870s to the 1890s.
During the late Victorian era, companies like Goodell, Reading Hardware, and Sinclair Scott went into a frenzy patenting different gear configurations to make food prep faster.
How it worked: You would clamp the base to the edge of a kitchen table. An apple was pushed onto the three-pronged fork (visible on the right side of the device). As you cranked the wooden handle, the complex system of gears would spin the apple while a spring-loaded, curved arm with a tiny blade swung around the fruit, stripping the peel away in one continuous ribbon. value ?