Seafood (1835)

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   "Seafood" is an important American food term of surprisingly recent vintage.
   OED and Merriam-Webster have 1836, from KNICKERBOCKER magazine.  The American Periodical Series online has that as its earliest "seafood."
   This is from Literature Online.  OK, it's only a year earlier!  I apologize!  This one's no charge!


Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851: The Monikins Volume 2 (1835)
The Monikins Volume 2
Main text
CHAPTER XII.
(...)
Then he
had sent the ship round to a distant roadstead, in
order that there might be no more post-captains
and rear-admirals among the people; and here had
he been as much as four days on nothing but nuts.
Nuts might do for the philosophy of a monkey, but
he found, on trial, that it played the devil with the
philosophy of a man. Things were bad enough as
they were. He pined for a little pork---he cared
not who knew it; it might not be very sentimental,
he knew, but it was capital sea-food; his natur'  (THIS LINE--ed.)
was pretty much pork; he believed most men had,
in some way or other, more or less pork in their
[Page 188]
human natur's; nuts might do for monikin natur',
but human natur' loved meat; if monikins did not
like it, monikins need not eat it; there would be so
much the more for those that did like it---he pined
for his natural aliment, and as for living nine years
in an eclipse, it was quite out of the question.
(...)