Pastry is one of the most important branches of culinary science, and possibly one of the oldest, for at a very early period the Orientals understood the art of utilizing flour for this purpose. In its primitive form pastry was simply a mixture of flour, oil and honey; and it appears to have been confined to these substances for centuries, even among the southern nations of the European continent. At the commencement of the middle ages a change began to take place; butter frequently replaced the oil, salt was used as a flavoring ingredient, and the qualities of richness and lightness which are imparted by eggs had been discovered. The next step was to use paste as an enclosure for meat, and when this advance was made, its use in combination with fruit, cream, etc., followed as a matter of course. The art advanced step by step until the middle of the nineteeth century, the dinner tables of the intervening period having afforded considerable scope for the display of constructive and decorative skill. Since the dinner à la Russe banished almost everything of an edible nature from the table, any talent in this direction has been chiefly expended on small pastries, which, if less imposing in structure than those of past ages, afford a wide field for ingenuity, taste and manipulative skill.

The recipes on the following pages comprise what may be termed standard pastes, and also their many variations. Numerous illustrations are given of the methods in which the respective preparations may be utilized for pies, tarts, tartlets, etc., with directions for compounding the mixtures employed for filling such pastry.