Abstract: A pasta which has a firm texture upon cooking is prepared by forming a pasta dough in a form of a sheet or a pasta shape, coating the dough with a mixture of egg white in liquid form and an edible oil and then heating the coated dough to coagulate, dry and bind the coating to the dough.

Abstract: Meat is processed by introducing it into a mobile cooking vessel after which the vessel is sealed from the atmosphere. A stock liquor is heated by a heat exchanger to a cooking temperature of at least 60.degree. C. and circulated through the vessel and the heat exchanger for a time sufficient to heat and cook the meat. After the meat is cooked, the circulating stock liquor is cooled by the heat exchanger to a temperature suitable to cool the heated, cooked meat to a temperature of no more than 15.degree. C. within 45 minutes.

Abstract: A continuous method of impregnating food material such as vegetables, fruit, meat, eggs, and fish wherein pieces of the food material are immersed in a concentrated solution, such as brine, syrup, meat curing solutions, humectant solutions and mixtures thereof, said pieces being initially buoyant in said solution and being passed together with said solution along a flow path to a separation zone wherein the impregnating solution flows downwards at a rate greater than the rate of flow of the food material whereby those pieces of food material which, by absorption of the desired quantity of impregnant, have lost sufficient of their buoyancy in the surrounding impregnating solution to be carried downwards by the said solution, are continuously separated from pieces of food material which have absorbed less than the desired quantity of impregnant.