The History of the Grater

The grater is a kitchen tool used to reduce the foods in minute fragments. Very old origin, is cited in Omero’s Iliad - Nestore “...he grated over goat cheese with a bronze grater” (Iliad, XI, 642-43) and is depicted in some Etruscan tombs of Cerveteri.

It is described by the Greek and Latin authors and Giovanni Boccacio (1313-1375), remembers it in 1350 in a short story of Decameron on the Country of Bengodi, together with Parmigiano cheese. The first “modern” grater depiction is in the Bartolomeo Scappi Work (1500-1577), published in Venice in 1570.

The oldest graters were made of bronze or iron sheet perforated with square section nails that in opening the holes raised the metal teeth to crush the cheese. There are metal graters (bronze, silver, iron, steel), glass, porcelain, stoneware, plastic materials and with holes (called eyes) and serrations of different sizes and shapes.

From a practical point of view, there are two ways of grate cheese: the cheese is moved manually along the grater surface, that remains still; the cheese stands still and is scratched by the moving grater. In this case, the abrasive part is made up of either cylinders or rotating blades.

The multiple uses of grater in the kitchen led to the end of the 19th Century, with the development of the metal printing technique, to the production of grater suitable for various types of foods: bread, cheese and vegetables, gathered in a single tool.

In the second half 20th Century the grater, like other kitchen tools, as cutlery, pots, colander, was at the center of the attention by design and designers, who have exponentially diversified the forms and specializations, adding service elements (drawers, dispensers, handles) to facilitate their use and evoking ironic forms often borrowed by the reality.

To increase the service level of the grater, many designers have devised tricks to collect and dose the grated cheese.