PASTE, in Cookery, a soft composition of flour, wrought up with proper fluids, as water, milk, or the like, to serve for cakes or coffins, therein to bake meats, fruits, &c. It is the basis or foundation of pies, tarts, patties, pasties, and other works of pastry. It is also used in confectionary, &c. for a preparation of some fruit, made by beating the pulp thereof with some fluid or other admixture, into a soft pappy consistence, spreading it into a dish, and drying it with sugar, till it becomes as pliable as an ordinary paste. It is used occasionally also for making the crusts and bottoms of pies, &c. Thus, with proper admixtures, are made almond pastes, apple pastes, apricot pastes, cherry, currant, lemon, plum, peach, and pear pastes.
PASTE is likewise used for a preparation of wheat flour, boiled up and incorporated with water; used by various artificers, as upholsterers, saddlers, bookbinders, &c. instead of glue or size, to fasten or cement their clothes, leathers, papers, &c. When paste is used by bookbinders, or for paper-hangings to rooms, they mix a fourth, fifth, or sixth, of the weight of the flour of powdered resin; and where it is wanted still more tenacious, gum arabic or any kind of size may be added. Paste may be preserved, by dissolving a little sublimate,
in the proportion of a dram to a quart, in the water employed for making it, which will prevent not only rats and mice, but any other kind of vermin and insects, from preying upon it.