in cookery, a soft composition of flour, wrought up with proper fluids, as water, milk, or the like, to serve for cases or coffins, therein to bake meats, fruits, &c. It is the basis or foundation of pyes, tarts, patties, pastes, 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 pyes, &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 wheaten 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 cloths, 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, nacious, 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.

the glass trade, or the imitation or counterfeiting of gems in glass, see Gem, p. 603.