If you didn’t grow up on Mother Goose rhymes, it goes like this:
To Market, to market to buy a fat pig,
Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.
To market, to market to buy a fat hog,
Home again, home again, jiggety-jog.
We cannot tell what this market lady has for sale, only that it is packed in hay in baskets, so it is fragile like eggs or mushrooms or fish. Before mechanical refrigeration and before anyone dreamed of frozen food, if you didn’t want to eat everything from a jar or can, you took to the street for farm produce in season, the butcher (beef, pork and poultry were separate shops), fishmonger, cheese vendor, for whatever was fresh.
Markets were not just for food; there may have been sellers of small household notions and handcrafted wares; on certain days of the week traveling sellers could be expected; yet the market square was a social place where you saw friends, killed time discussing business and farm conditions and caught up on the latest gossip. This day, in the 1880s perhaps, is brisk weather but not brisk business. It is a small unmounted albumen print of a French town market.
If you didn’t find what you wanted for dinner or didn’t want to cook, you might take your meal at the cafe restaurant on the corner.