There _were_ a whole bunch of different kinds of pastry, and some were eaten and some weren't, and they served a variety of functions. Karen Hess' excellent _Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery_ does her usual phenomenal job of extensively commenting on each recipe -- she talks about the various coffins, pastes and so forth, and how to translate the recipe into something that could be accomplished with modern measures and so forth. In any event, the question of _sugar_ and pastry is completely off the mark on the website I did not point to. The ancient apple pie recipe had a pastry that was almost certainly intended to be eaten. But I really have my doubts about any kind of crust magic enough to keep meat good for a year. Really? Maybe if the meat was smoked or jerked?

Clarkson is right that the architectural coarse pastes involved rye flour. I had not realized that until just now, when I was reading the Booke of Cookery.