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"the [science fiction] writer should be able to convince the reader (and himself) that the wonders he is describing really can come true...and that gets tricky when you take a good, hard look at the world around you."
- Frederik Pohl

Food Tablet  
  All of your nutrients in one easy-to-swallow form factor.  

Early instance of the "food tablet" idea.

"These elements are then synthetically combined into food tablets for those of us who are yet alive."
Technovelgy from John Jones's Dollar, by Harry Stephen Keeler.
Published by Black Cat in 1915
Additional resources -

An cautionary note for food tablet enthusiasts, from The Heritage of the Earth (1932) by Harvey S. Aldinger:

Our host explained to us that he was able to manufacture a food substitute in the form of tablets, but they were undesirable both to his daughter and himself, because their continual use would cause a disuse of the stomach and digestive organs, thus altering the shape of the body, which was unthinkable, especially to Laelia...

Compare to the somewhat tastier food bricks from the 1971 novel Ringworld by Larry Niven.

Compare to the compact food pastilles from The Senator's Daughter (1879) by Edward Page Mitchell, nutritious pellets from Looking Forward: A Dream of the United States of the Americas in 1999 (1899) by Arthur Bird, concentro from Armageddon: 2419 A.D. (1928) by Philip Frances Nowlan, wine pellets from Redmask of the Outlands (1934) by Nat Schachner and dainties from Prelude to Foundation (1988) by Isaac Asimov.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from John Jones's Dollar
  More Ideas and Technology by Harry Stephen Keeler
  Tech news articles related to John Jones's Dollar
  Tech news articles related to works by Harry Stephen Keeler

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