This is a Victorian kitchen implement and is labelled a 'vegetable roller' but why would anyone want to roll vegetables?

I have tried to download a photo but without success. The photo is from a cookbook by Fanny Craddock printed in the 1950s.

I think there is someone here who has a link to a site of culinary history (Tudor recipes, tools etc) and I wondered if they could post it again so that I can peruse at leisure?

Interesting. I wonder if it was to make thin rolled-up cigar shapes from vegetable slices or from leaves, prior to stuffing them (like dolmades - stuffed vine leaves) or just to make them decorative ... ie it flattens the slices, thins them down like a standard rolling pin, and gives them a slight curl. Seems a bit useless to me and I'm not sure it would work - so I may well have that idea completely wrong. And as Temp once observed, "who has time to stuff a mushroom these days anyway?".

I wondered about stuffed vine leaves (or stuffed cabbage leaves 'golabki' from my Polish childhood). However, I know that my dad made them quite easily by hand and certainly did not have a roller.

Indeed, and if you needed to flatten vegetables in some way, why not just use a regular rolling pin as for pastry? I note that the roller doesn't have parallel faces but is convex, which might tend to produce a sort of channel effect on whatever is being rolled out and which could then be filled ... sort of like filling a slice of celery with cream cheese. there again it if the substance wasn't very plastic I can see it producing a curled effect as the centre line would end up longer than the edges.

I found this [url=https://lazyfry.com %E2%80%BA products %E2%80%BA vegetable-roller]https://lazyfry.com › products › vegetable-roller[/url] which does seem to be used for making the stuffed vine leaves etc (though it's nothing like the vegetable rollers pictured in the original comment on this thread).  The one I've linked to looks a bit like a gizmo for rolling one's own cigarettes (though much larger).  Sorry editing because although when I am in editing mode it looks as if the full link has "taken" the vegetable roller doesn't show as part of the link so if anyone follows the link to the home page of the site they'll have to do a search for vegetable-roller when they enter the site.

Bless you for trying to solve this puzzle.

The question popped up on another website (Food refugees. It's a relic from the old BBC boards).

The concensus view is that it is used to puree vegetables through a sieve, and that's why it's convex (to accommodate the sloping sides of a half-moon sieve). 

We still don't know if that's the correct answer, but according to Fanny Craddock "it is an indispensable kitchen item" so why we are all in the dark about it's usage and provenance is a mystery.

The device in question looks remarkably similar to this:



... which is an "agate face-roller" (to get rid of facial wrinkles), and which apparently is designed to channel negative ions, enhance chancras and generally be full of woo.   

Fanny Craddock was notoriously quite a heavy smoker and so had quite a "lived-in" face ... so maybe she just dropped a beauty aid into the cutlery drawer.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I found this [url=https://lazyfry.com %E2%80%BA products %E2%80%BA vegetable-roller]https://lazyfry.com › products › vegetable-roller[/url] which does seem to be used for making the stuffed vine leaves etc (though it's nothing like the vegetable rollers pictured in the original comment on this thread).  The one I've linked to looks a bit like a gizmo for rolling one's own cigarettes (though much larger).  Sorry editing because although when I am in editing mode it looks as if the full link has "taken" the vegetable roller doesn't show as part of the link so if anyone follows the link to the home page of the site they'll have to do a search for vegetable-roller when they enter the site.

 
Yes Lady, 

I did also some research you know me and found nothing but the device you mentioned. And I full agree to all what MM said.
MM,  as you say with that device as mentioned by Hatshepsut, you will indeed have perhaps curled sides and could that perhaps use to fill it with meat or anything and then roll it together by hand, to have something similar to the modern stuff?



Kind regards from Paul.