Pate de Gomme Senegal—Senegal Paste.—Gum Senegal two pounds, sugar one pound. Dissolve the gum in orange-flower water and common water; or dissolve it in common water, and flavor with essence of neroli; add the sugar, when clarified and boiled to the blow; evaporate, and finish as pate de jujube. This is usually sold for jujube paste, or else picked gum arabic made into a paste as Senegal, and colored with prepared cochineal or saffron.
Pate de Reglisse Noir—Black Licorice Paste.—The best refined licorice one pound, gum arabic four pounds, loaf sugar two pounds, Florence orris-root one ounce. Dissolve the gum and licorice in seven pints of water, keeping it stirred over a slow fire; add the sugar in syrup with the orris-root, evaporated to a paste, and finish as jujubes.
Peach Paste.—Choose some very fine and ripe peaches, take off the skin, and cut them in small pieces into a preserving pan; put them on the fire, and reduce to a thick consistence, stirring it continually. For each pound of reduced pulp take half or three-quarters of a pound of sugar; clarify and boil it to the blow; add it to the pulp; put it again on the fire, and let it boil a few minutes. Finish as other pastes.
Plum Paste.—Plums of any kind are preserved in the same manner, whether green gages, magnum bonums, Orleans, damsons, etc. Take out their stones, and boil the fruit in a little water, as for apricot paste; pass them through a sieve, and for each pound of reduced pulp take a pound of sugar; clarify and boil it to the blow; mix it with the paste, and evaporate to the required consistence.
Quince Paste.—Proceed as for apple paste.
Raspberry Cakes.—Take ripe raspberries, press the juice from half of them, and put the pulp back with the others; reduce them on the fire. To each pound of pulp add two pounds of loaf sugar in powder; put it again on the fire, stirring it constantly until it is evaporated to a very thick paste. Have a tin ring, with a handle by the side, about the size of an old penny piece, and twice the thickness; wet the ring, and place it on your small pewter or tin plates, fill it with the paste, smoothing over the top with a knife; then remove the ring, and the cake will remain. Lay them off in rows, and make three or four marks on the top with the handle of a table-spoon; put them in the stove to dry, turn them with a thin knife, and put them again in the stove to dry perfectly. Place them in boxes, with paper between each layer.
The residue from the making of raspberry vinegar may be employed for this purpose, or they may be made by adding a pound of fine powdered sugar to a pound of jam. Any of the fruit pastes may be formed into cakes like these, or into drops, by forcing them out on paper with a small pipe and bladder attached to it.
Raspberry Paste.—As currant paste.
Violets, Gum of.—Violet flowers one pound, picked gum two pounds, sugar four ounces in syrup. Pour three pints of water at the boiling point on the flowers in an earthen jar; stop it perfectly close, and keep it in a warm place for ten or twelve hours; strain the infusion by expression into a flat pan or dish, place it on an inclination, and let it rest for an hour, that the fæces may subside; pour off the clear gently from the bottom or settling, and add to it six grains of turnsole bruised, and six grains of carmine, as this clear infusion is not sufficiently colored to give it the beautiful tint of the violet. Mix in the powdered gum and sugar, stir it over a moderate fire until dissolved, pass it through a sieve, and finish in the bain-marie as jujubes.
Any of these gums, when dry, may be crystallized.