“I never shall want another Turkish lunch. The cooking apparatus was in the little lunch room, near the bazaar, and it was all open to the street. The cook was slovenly, and so was the table, and it had no cloth on it. The fellow took a mass of sausage meat and coated it round a wire and laid it on a charcoal fire to cook. When it was done, he laid it aside and a dog walked sadly in and nipped it. He smelt it first, and probably recognized the remains of a friend. The cook took it away from him and laid it before us. Jack said, “I pass”--he plays euchre sometimes--and we all passed in turn. Then the cook baked a broad, flat, wheaten cake, greased it well with the sausage, and started towards us with it. It dropped in the dirt, and he picked it up and polished it on his breeches, and laid it before us. Jack said, “I pass.” We all passed. He put some eggs in a frying pan, and stood pensively prying slabs of meat from between his teeth with a fork. Then he used the fork to turn the eggs with--and brought them along. Jack said “Pass again.” All followed suit. We did not know what to do, and so we ordered a new ration of sausage. The cook got out his wire, apportioned a proper amount of sausage-meat, spat it on his hands and fell to work! This time, with one accord, we all passed out. We paid and left. That is all I learned about Turkish lunches. A Turkish lunch is good, no doubt, but it has its little drawbacks.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
1 pound of fresh pork. 1/2 pint of stale bread. 1/4 teaspoonful of pepper. 1/2 tablespoonful of salt. 1/2 teaspoonful of powdered sage. 1/2 teaspoonful of powdered thyme. Have the meat one fourth fat and three fourths lean, and chopped fine. Soak the bread in cold water until it is soft, then press out all the water. Mix the seasonings and the bread with the meat. When all the ingredients are thoroughly combined, shape into small flat cakes, and fry until brown on both sides. It will take twenty minutes to cook the cakes thoroughly.
Sources: The passage is from Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Parloa, Miss Parloa's Young Housekeeper of 1893, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — forest cloth, amphora stamp.