Apple-Preparation Tools

As eighteenth-century American apple orchards expanded throughout the colonies, demand increased for mechanical aid in preparing the seasonal harvest for cider, preserves, and drying. By the 1780s or 1790s, belt-driven, bench-mounted wooden devices made paring quicker. Seated astride the bench, with one hand the operator cranked a shaft with an apple on its pronged tip while pressing a sharp-bladed shaver against the fruit. The first parer patent, in 1803, was for a simple wood and iron device clamped to a tabletop. Homemade adaptations during the next forty years led to mass-produced cast-iron peelers with replaceable, bolted-together parts, gears that increased the apple’s turning speed, and blades held firmly against the fruit with a spring. A simple lathe-type apple parer, “The White Mountain,” first patented in 1880, is still made in the early 2000s.