WAFER is a small round piece of dried paste, which is used to fasten letters. The piece of consecrated cake which is given by the Roman Catholic priest in extreme unction is also called a wafer ; and thin cake formed into a roll, and called wafers, is still sold by pastrycooks. In fact the word was used in England to signify a thin cake long before wafers for sealing letters were invented. Traffil is the. name given by the Germans to a thin cake made with flour, eggs, sugar, Am. ; the Dutch call such a cake wafer, and the Danes vaffel. The Anglo-Saxons also had the name we'd.
In making common wafers for securing letters, wheat flour is mixed with isinglass and white of egg into a paste ; the paste is spread. evenly over tin plates, several of which are piled one on another and put into an oven. The layer becomes thus both baked and polished. When baked, the layers are taken
from the tins, piled into a heap an inch or more in depth, and cut into wafers by means of hollow punches. They are coloured with the usual mineral colouring materials. Me dallion wafers are made of very pure glue, coloured to any desired tint. A seal or medallion is moistened with a weak solution of either white or coloured gum, which gum is wiped off all except the sunken parts. The glue is then poured over the medallion in a very thin layer ; and the result produced is a medallion wafer, either white or coloured, but standing out in relief from a ground of another colour. /sing/ass or gelatine wafers are made of a coloured solution of isinglass, which is poured in a very thin layer on a glass plate, and afterwards cut into any desired form.