Junket

Entry in progress—B.P.
 
Wiktionary: junket
Noun
junket (plural junkets)
1.(obsolete) A basket.
2.A type of cream cheese, originally made in a rush basket; later, a food made of sweetened curds or rennet.
3.A feast or banquet.
4.A pleasure-trip; a journey made for feasting or enjoyment, now especially a trip made ostensibly for business but which entails merrymaking or entertainment.
5.(gaming) 20-40 table gaming rooms for which the capacity and limits change daily. Junket rooms are often rented out to private vendors who run tour groups through them and give a portion of the proceeds to the main casino.
 
(Oxford English Dictionary)
junket, n.
A feast or banquet; a merrymaking accompanied with feasting; also in mod. use (chiefly U.S.), a pleasure expedition or outing at which eating and drinking are prominent; a picnic-party. Also transf. and fig.; spec. (see quot. 1886).
1530 J. Palsgrave Lesclarcissement 235   Ionkette, banquet.
(...)
1848 Thackeray Vanity Fair xxviii. 243 A new jaunt or junket every night.
1873 W. H. Dixon Hist. Two Queens I. iv. viii. 229   Amidst his bridal junkets, Charles was told [etc.].
1886 Detroit Free Press 4 Sept. 4/2   The term ‘junket’ in America is generally applied to a trip taken by an American official at the expense of the government.
   
6 March 1873, Indianapolis (IN) Sentinel, pg. 1: 
From the mighty preparations Prof. Cox is making for his Vienna junket, it is feared that the geological cabinet will be transferred to the capital of Austria.
 
6 March 1874, Cincinnati (OH) Daily Enquirer, pg. 5:
COLUMBUS.
Miller’s Bill Practically Defeated—How It Came About—Cincinnati Finances to Be Made Easy—A Trip of the Junketers Projected.
(...)
The House Committee on Public Works, accompanied by about twenty other members, will start to Cincinnati to-morrow evening. nominally to examine the Miami Canal, and see what effect the passage of Boyce’s bill to vacate it will have. Perhaps there is a junketting scheme connected with the trip in some way, though of that more can be said hereafter.
 
Google Books
Railroads:
Their Origin and Problems
By Charles Francis Adams
New York, NY:  G.P. Putnam’s Sons
1878
Pg. 78:
Nevertheless on the 27th of December 1841, the members of the Boston city government started for Albany, on what would now be termed a “municipal junket.”
   
Google Books
6 June 1885, The Current (Chicago), pg. 355, col. 2:
Without such results, the affair will be a wasteful junket, like a Legislatiive “tour of inspection.”
 
Google Books
Safire’s Political Dictionary
By William Safire
New York, NY: Oxford University Press
2008
Pg. 369:
Junket and junketeer carry connotations of joyride, a vacation at public (or anyone else’s) expense. Congressmen called these NONPOLITICAL TRIPS, inspection tours, or FACT-FINDING TRIPS by a Codel, short for congressional delegation; critics call them junkets, When a business firm or tourist board invotes newsmen on a junket, it is so labeled; some newspapers insist on paying the equivalent air fare to the destination.
 
Google Books
Historical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress
By Scot Schraufnagel
Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press
2011
Pg. 121:
JUNKETS. A pejorative term used to reference all-expenses-paid “fact-finding” excursions by members of Congress amd paid for by either taxpayers or special interest groups.