I don't think the first citation would have been the last. I don't have access to OED but I doubt that the usage has been unused for 1000 years. Gareth?
The
OED has only a sampling of citations: there are three early citations from c.1000 to c.1200, and then three late citations from 1844 to to 1951. Latest is "1951 J. Frame
Lagoon 60 Goodbye and thank you for the little eat."
It's hard to fill the gaps by corpora searches because the overwhelming preponderance of the verb
eat makes the noun hard to find.