Table luxuries, anyone?

The signage at Sam’s Dairy has a couple of curious terms. One of them: table luxuries .

The term is missing from Merriam-Webster’s Second and Third, and it appears in the Oxford English Dictionary only in a 1903 citation for laver , an edible seaweed. From P. W. Joyce, A Social History of Ancient Ireland (1903):

The marine-plant called Porphyra vulgaris, a species of laver, found growing on rocks round the coast, was esteemed a table luxury: it is now often sold in fish-shops and eaten with pepper, vinegar, &c.

It’s fair to say though that seaweed is not what people typically had in mind when speaking of table luxuries. What they did seem to have in mind: anything beyond main staples such as coffee, flour, sugar.

That might even include fruits and vegetables. Here’s a photograph (c. 1890–1915) by Jenny Young Chandler of a wagon belonging to Fehrenbach Table Luxuries. Look closely: fruits and vegetables on the sign, vegetables on the wagon. Carrots, cauliflower: table luxuries. Or perhaps they were just to get customers to visit a store.

A swanker version of table luxuries appears in Eva A. Alvey Richards account of her Milwaukee family’s situation in 1893:

Father at that time was importing luxuries — table luxuries, such as truffles and pâté de foie gras, caviar, olives, wines, and cordials — a business he had followed for many years.

That sentence seems just made for an OED citation, no?

And from New York, 1894 (A.F. Parsons, 1894), a helpful list:

The importation of table luxuries constitutes a most important feature of New York’s commerce. Among the most recently established of those engaged in the trade is Mr. Geo. K. Etienne, who began operations in September, 1894. He is sole agent for the United States for the Paris house of Mr. Joseph Ramell, dealer in sardines, peas, mushrooms, beans, macedoine, olive oil, truffles, macaroni, candied and preserved fruits, etc. These products are guaranteed to be the the finest of the kind the market affords.

I’m amused to think that sardines are once again a table luxury: a couple of weeks ago I saw a Portuguese brand selling for $12 a tin.

From The New York Times , October 23, 1916 (gift link), an article with an urgent headline: “Rush Heavy Imports of Table Luxuries; Dainties Worth $2,000,000 Brought In for Holiday Dinners”:

Among the things now coming in from abroad for the holiday dinner table are currants, dates, figs, grapes, lemons, olives, raisins, preserved fruits, nuts of many kinds, together with cured and canned fish of the higher grades. The countries furnishing these delicacies were Greece, England, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Japan, China, and the West Indies.

In 1925 tomatoes and cucumbers were table luxuries in New York. From The New York Times , January 11, 1925 (gift link), “Vegetables in Liberal Supply”:

Cucumbers and tomatoes now head the list of table luxuries, according to the weekly review of local food markets made public yesterday by Dr. Arthur E. Albrecht, Director of the New York office of the State Department of Farms and Markets. The review among other things says:

“Cucumbers and tomatoes at this season are generally to be classed with the luxuries, the price for cucumbers in the stores lately being mostiy 10 and 15 cents each and tomatoes 25 and 30 cents a pound.”

No indication of where those cucumbers and tomatoes were coming from, but the article also mentions “fancy hothouse grapes” coming from Belgium. (Belgium!)

Okay, that’s enough investigating for me. Now I want to drive to St. Louis and visit DiGregorio’s Italian Market.

For sentimental reasons, here’s the final Times appearance of “table luxuries” — meaning food, not china and cutlery — in an October 29, 1980 advertisement for a now-defunct delicatessen:

[Click for a larger view.]