A gobbet is a small chunk of meat, roughly the size of a mouthful. It is derived from the Old French

Old French

Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...

 gober (to swallow) which is related to the modern word gobble (to eat quickly).

In modern usage, a gobbet is an extract of text, or image, provided as a context for analysis, translation or discussion in an examination. The Oxford English Dictionary

Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

contains no references to gobbets as literary fragments before 1912.