Creole Coffee; Danish Pastry; Virginia Reel

[Fred Shapiro]

On Tue, 1 Aug 2000 Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

>      OED has 1935 for "Danish Pastry"--and it cites Webster.  Boy, and you
> thought OED was bad on "biscotti"!
>      From John Mariani's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN FOOD & DRINK (1999):
>
> _Danish pastry._  (...)  Although the pastries may have Danish origins, these
> flaky buns and rolls are more foten associated with New York Jewish
> delicatessens and bakeries.  With this meaning the word first appeared in
> print in 1928.

This is interesting.  I had assumed Mariani takes his dates from the OED.
Did he do his own primary research?  Does he give exact citations, or just
dates?  And can anyone from Merriam-Webster give the earliest citation in
their files, the basis for the listing in W2 in 1934 (not 1935)?


Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2