Grater

Grater

Grate the cheese.

A grater is also known as a shredder, and by pressing the food against the grater and moving the food down along it, it shreds the food into smaller pieces.
Graters come in a wide variety of shapes and styles, including the traditional box grater, and the plane grater, although most have a steel plate with sharp edged holes.
It is believed that French François Boullier invented the grater in the 1540s, due to a surplus supply of cheese, although the surplus was short lived, and so graters were very rarely used in the following centuries.
Due to the significant excess of cheese in the early 1500s, much of the cheese hardened due to longer storage times, so grating the cheese made it more usable.
Graters can cut fingers or knuckles if you strike your hand on one, so care needs to be taken while grating.

Coconut graters are used as musical instruments in Jamaica.
The first grater was made out of pewter, a type of metal mainly made of tin, and can be seen in the Muséum du Havre in France.
Graters were reintroduced in the 1920s by Jeffery Taylor from Philadelphia, a cheese shop owner, after he read about Boullier’s invention, and his first grater was said to be a sharpened metal shower drain.
Cheese; some vegetables; citrus rinds; chocolate; and other hard, or semi hard foods can be grated, which allows them to cook or melt more quickly, or they can be used as a garnish.
Graters became popular in the Great Depression because grated cheese appeared to have greater volume, which was an advantage to those who could not afford large quantities of food.