Dinner on Lemnos
The governor of Lemnos, the vaivode, invited us to dine with him and treated us as friends, giving us the opportunity to observe what the Turks normally do for guests whom they invite to eat with them at home. If they wished to treat an ambassador or the like with greater ceremony, clearly they could arrange to provide fancier dishes than was done for us on this occasion: but we shall describe what they normally do. The first dish was of raw cucumbers without vinegar or oil, and that is how they eat it, with no other seasoning but salt. After that we had raw onions and raw mouronne, and beside this there was a soup of trachanas, and honey and bread. Also, since there were Christian Greeks among the company, we drank wine, brought by some monks of the neighbourhood. This is how the Turks dine, and there is no fuss over napkins and white tablecloth. They make no difficulty about mixing with Christians.

Pierre Belon, Les observations de plusieurs singularitez et choses mémorables trouvées en Grèce, Asie, Judée, Égypte, Arabie et autres pays estranges (Paris, 1553) book 1 chapter 27. Translation published in Andrew Dalby, Siren Feasts (Routledge, 1996) p. 203.

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