But these Turks live so sparingly, and care so little for the pleasures of the table, that if they have bread and salt with an onion or leek, or a kind of sour milk which Galen mentions by the name of oxygala, and they call yoghoort, they are quite content. They mix this milk with very cold water, and crumble bread into it, using it when the heat is overpowering, to allay their thirst. We, too, often found this drink most useful in hot weather, for not only is it very pleasant and wholesome, but it also has, to a remarkable degree, the power of quenching thirst.
At all the caravanserais (or Turkish inns, as I explained before) there is plenty of it for sale, and other relishes are also to be bought. For the Turks do not, when travelling, require hot dishes or meat; their relishes are sour milk, cheese, dried prunes, pears, peaches, quinces, figs, raisins, cornel berries. Dainties of this description are set out for sale on great pans of earthenware, having been first boiled in plain water. Each man buys what he fancies most, and eats the fruit with his bread by way of a relish; when he has finished the fruit he drinks the water. Thus these men’s food and drink costs them very little, so little, indeed, that I would venture to say that one of our people will spend more on his food in one day than a Turk does in twelve. Moreover their yearly feasts generally consist only of cakes and buns, and other confectionery, with several dishes of rice, to which they add mutton and chickens—not capons,[136] for poultry of that kind is unknown to the Turks. As to pheasants, thrushes, becaficos, &c., they have never even heard them mentioned. If honey or sugar be mixed with their draught of water, they would not envy Jove his nectar.
I must not, however, pass over one kind of drink, if I am to give you a full account. They take raisins and have them ground; when ground and pounded they throw them into a wooden vessel, and pour over them a certain proportion of hot water and mix them up; they then cover the vessel carefully, and leave the liquor to ferment for a couple of days; if the fermentation is not sufficiently active they add the lees of wine. If you taste it when first it begins to ferment, it seems insipid and disagreeably sweet; afterwards it gets a kind of acid flavour; in this stage it is extremely palatable when mixed with the sweet liquor. For three or four days it forms a most pleasant drink, especially when cooled with plenty of snow, of which there is an unfailing supply at Constantinople. They call it ‘Arab sherbet,’ i.e. ‘the drink of the Arabs.’ But after three or four days it is spoilt, and gets quite sour. In this stage it affects the head, and makes people stagger quite as much as wine, and on this account is condemned by the religious laws of the Turks. I must confess that I thought sherbet a most pleasant drink.