Maybe a place to rest something, like a knife sticking straight down? That sounds incredibly dangerous to me, tho.

probably a support for a built-in cutting board that was integrated with a prior version of the countertop.

The entire cutting board?

Stax and rwiegand-

There is a large, pullout cutting board nearby that seems to be of the same vintage.

Pam A-

I don’t think so, because the knob and “drawer front“ are attached to a pair of metal bars and once you pull it out about 5” the entire front part pivots down.

Any other thoughts? ;-)

A place to hang a purse or grocery bag?

Kristin- It seems unlikely as you could do that with something less complex.

Security feature for the exit door nearby.

Creative-

That was an inspired guess, but I think it’s far enough away that it wouldn’t be effective.

Oh, so the handle bit swings down and you have just a wooden plank sticking out of the side of the cabinet? I wonder if it was there to attach table top hand-crank things onto? Like the apple peeler or meat grinder or sausage stuffers you can buy that you clamp onto a table top. I can see how a Formica counter would be too thick for some of those, maybe this was a way to let you clamp the food mill onto a surface that is at/near counter height.

Or it's the worlds smallest cutting board for little rolls for sliders and finger sandwiches.

My first thought was that it is to clamp a peeler or food mill to.

It would work particularly well for clamping a peeler, as you could put a bucket or bin underneath to collect the peels.

Pasta dryer?

Pam, bpath, and Kristin-

I think that is entirely plausible :-)

Is there a matching mark on the underneath for that small circle a few inches from the end? If this is for clamping a grinder, the bottom would have a similar indentation. That seems likely the original use

It looks like there are some traces of clamp marks.

It was used to beat unruly children who wouldn’t stop begging for another bowl of gruel