Abstract: A process for treating vegetables and fruit in order to reduce their resistance to cutting. Treatment involves the application of a high electric field directly to the vegetables and fruit, under such conditions that the resulting temperature increase for the vegetables and fruit is almost zero and at any rate, sufficiently low not to amount to a preheating step.

Abstract: A process for treating vegetables and fruit in order to reduce their resistance to cutting. Treatment involves the application of a high electric field directly to the vegetables and fruit, under such conditions that the resulting temperature increase for the vegetables and fruit is almost zero and at any rate, sufficiently low not to amount to a preheating step.

Abstract: A check sample of a deep-frozen product or a product is provided, whose keeping, conserving or preserving temperature, which is below ambient temperature, must be controlled or checked. The sample includes a case or envelope, which is sealed in an inviolable manner and, in the case or envelope, a meltable object having a predetermined shape different from the internal shape of the case. This object has a melting point below or equal to the thawing or keeping temperature of the product and the initial shape of the object is impossible to reconstitute following thawing or reheating, even of a partial nature, of the product. According to the invention, the case comprises a first part made invisible and integral with the product or a pack containing the latter by insertion into the pack or the case a second part, which is visible and integral with the first part.

Abstract: Gelling of a liquid or liquefication of a gel are investigated or controlled by differential measurement of thermal characteristics of the involved medium. The temperature of the medium is measured by a first probe (delivering a first temperature indicating signal) while a second probe (sufficiently far away from the first probe not to disturb the latter through temperature changes) imparts heat to said medium and delivers a signal corresponding to its temperature. The signals respectively emitted by the probes are processed in an electrical data processing unit wherein the signals are combined in a correcting stage which corrects the signal delivered by the second probe taking into account the signal delivered by the first probe to deliver information indicating the change of state of the medium.