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Chiefly found in glossarial contexts, the obsolete expression Dutch feast designates a social occasion where the host gets drunk at an earlier time than the guests.
This expression occurs, for example, in the column Wordly Wise, by James McDonald, published in the Sunday Express (London, England) of Sunday 1st September 1985 [page 10, column 7]:
Language inevitably develops in a way which reflects our opinions and prejudices.
Sometimes a hint of prejudice remains long after its cause has ceased to exist. Take for example the centuries long dislike of our chief rivals on the high seas: the Dutch. Nowadays there exists a strong bond of friendship between our two countries. Yet we still retain some of the phrases which remind us of centuries-old rivalry and prejudice.
[…] In the building trade a dutchman is a device for masking faulty work.
A Dutch feast is one where the host gets drunk before the guests, and a Dutch medley is one in which everyone sings a different song at the same time. A Dutch wife is a bolster for the bed.
“I’m a Dutchman” is a phrase still used to indicate the impossible; but we no longer refer to frogs as Dutch nightingales. Neither do we refer to the Dutch themselves as “frogs” as we once did, Napoleonic and later rivalries transferring that particular offensive term elsewhere.
Thus, Dutch feast is one of several expressions in which the adjective Dutch is used derogatorily or derisively—cf., for example, the phrase to take Dutch leave and the expressions mentioned in quotation 5 below.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the expression Dutch feast that I have found:
1-: From The Diary of John Evelyn (Woodbridge (Suffolk): The Boydell Press, 1995), by the English diarist John Evelyn (1620-1706), edited by Guy de la Bédoyère [page 255]—however, here, the author seems to imply that the expression Dutch feast refers to the guests getting drunk:
[London, 25th November 1682] I was invited by Monsieur Lionberg The Swedish Resident, who made a magnificent Entertainment it being the Birth-day of his King: There dined the Duke of Albemarle, D: Hamilton, Earle of Bathe, E: of Alesbery, Lord Arran, Lord Castlehaven, the sonn of him who was executed 50 yeares before for Enormous Lusts &c: & sevveral greate persons: I was exceedingly afraide of Drinking, (it being a Dutch feast) but the Duke of Albemarle being that night to waite on his Majestie Excesse was prohibited; & to prevent all, I stole away & left the Company as soone as we rose from Table.
2-: From A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (London: S. Hooper, 1785), by the English antiquary and lexicographer Francis Grose (1731-1791) [s.v. DUT, page unnumbered]:
Dutch Feast, where the entertainer gets drunk before his guests.
3-: From A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words: Used at the Present Day in the Streets of London; the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; the Houses of Parliament; the Dens of St. Giles; and the Palaces of St. James (London: John Camden Hotten, 1859) [page 35]:
DUTCH FEAST, where the host gets drunk before his guest.
4-: From Byeways of English, published in Meliora: A Quarterly Review of Social Science in its Ethical, Economical, Political, and Ameliorative Aspects (London: S. W. Partridge, 1869) [Vol. 12, page 27]—here, Geneva designates a clear alcoholic spirit from Belgium and the Netherlands, distilled from grain and flavoured with juniper:
Sir Walter Scott, in his ‘Peveril of the Peak,’ makes Gunlesse speak of ‘a Netherland his weasand, which expanded only on these natural and mortal objects of aversion—Dutch cheese, rye bread, pickled herring, onions, and Geneva.’ In ordinary slang, too, an entertainment in which the host becomes intoxicated at an earlier time than the guests, is called a ‘Dutch feast.’
5-: From Some Slang Phrases, published in All the Year Round. A Weekly Journal. Conducted by Charles Dickens (London, England) of Saturday 9th June 1888 [page 542, column 2]—the expression Dutch feast was already obsolete by then:
The adjective “Dutch,” by what seems a somewhat curious caprice of popular taste, is used in a variety of common phrases, to denote something inferior, or to some extent contemptible. A “Dutch concert” is one wherein each man sings his own song, or each performer plays his own tune, at the same time that his comrades sing or play theirs. […] “Dutch courage,” perhaps, refers in part to the “Hollands” which so often inspired the pot-valour so characterised; but it is also, no doubt, like other of these phrases, a witness to the long-standing hatred and enmity between the English and the Dutch. […] Fielding, in “Tom Jones,” speaks of “Dutch defence,” in the sense of sham defence. “Dutch,” or “Double Dutch,” is often used as a synonym for gibberish, especially nowadays with reference to the prattle of young children. “Dutch feast” is a phrase now obsolete; it was formerly applied to an entertainment where the host got drunk before his guests. “Dutch auctions” are well known.
[…]
A writer in the “East Anglian” of 1869, in a list of sea words and phrases in use on the Suffolk coast, has the following: “There were the squires on the bench, but I took heart, and talked to ’em like a Dutch uncle.” The use of this not very intelligible phrase is by no means confined to the Suffolk coast. The expression often heard, “Thank Heaven it is no worse,” is sometimes called “Dutch consolation.”
6-: From A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant. Embracing English, American, and Anglo-Indian Slang, Pidgin English, Tinkers’ Jargon and other irregular Phraseology (Edinburgh: The Ballantyne Press, 1889), by Albert Barrère and Charles Godfrey Leland [Vol. 1, page 341, column 2]:
Dutch feast (common), a dinner at which the host gets drunk before his guests.
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