Considered an essential piece of furniture in Scotland, a scrubbed softwood kitchen table, often made from deal wood or pine (called “fir” in Scotland), was used for “eating, food preparation, working and even for minor surgical operations such as tonsillectomies.”[99] Gillow produced a drawing in May 1793 for a “common deal dining table” which, being made from a softwood, was probably used in the kitchen.[100] Such single-leaf kitchen tables especially made sense in the tight quarters of tenement house kitchens.[101] Single-leaf tables could be found in Scottish kitchens as late as the 1960s, only losing popularity when the preference for built-in kitchen cabinets and counters came into vogue (Figures 29 and 30).
Seems that besides the type of wood and the simple construction, the look of those tables included a folding side (that is the “leaf”) (figure 29 and 30 in the web page).