Farberware Swivel, also shaves cheese

Very well, and Farberware is the only listing on this shelf to mention it. Drawn across the face of a block of parmesan, pecorino or aged manchego, a swivel peeler lifts a wide thin curl — the kind you scatter over a salad or a plate of pasta, and which no box grater can produce, because a grater shreds and a peeler shaves. The same stroke over a bar of dark chocolate gives shavings for the top of a cake, and over a knob of butter gives curls for the table. What makes a peeler good at it is the same thing that makes it good at courgettes: a swivel head that follows a flat or gently convex face without biting in. Keep the cheese cold and the blade sharp.

Because they are the test a blunt blade fails. Farberware names "apples, peaches, zucchini, eggplant, and potatoes", and the soft-skinned two are the interesting ones. A potato has a firm skin over firm flesh and forgives a dull edge — you press harder and it still comes off. A peach has a thin skin over flesh that bruises, and an aubergine has a tough glossy skin over something that collapses: a dull or fixed blade tears the skin and drags the flesh with it. What they need is a genuinely sharp edge on a swivel mount, which takes the thinnest possible strip with almost no downward pressure. KitchenAid makes the same point on both its peelers, which are "perfect for peeling all fruits and vegetables, including soft skin foods".

A swivel peeler with the blade in line with the handle — the classic shape — and the term is used loosely on this shelf. Farberware calls this a "Euro Vegetable Peeler with Swivel Blade"; KitchenAid sells a "Classic Euro Peeler" with a double-edged serrated blade; and Rainspire, whose product is titled a "Swivel Vegetable Peeler", calls itself a euro peeler in one of its bullets. In practice "euro" signals the in-line, pull-toward-you geometry as against a Y-peeler, where the blade sits across the handle and you plane with it. On this shelf the Y-peelers are the KitchenAid Y and the OXO Julienne, and FUHUY is the only listing that includes both shapes in one pack.