This could be the reason for an average deviation of 4 °C between predicted and experimentally obtained temperature data for concentrated orange juice. In both these cases, numerical simulation under-predicted the temperature before the final thawing point and over-predicted the temperature after the food item was completely thawed. Similar trend was previously observed by Leung and Chan (2009). This discrepancy may be attributed due to ignoring the effect of temperature on density and thermal conductivity of individual food components, as mentioned in Table 1. The results for peppers and onions (Fig. 10B) showed better agreement between the numerical predictions and experimental data, with an average deviation of 2 °C. Results for French toast (Fig. 10B) showed an average deviation of 5 °C. This high deviation may be mainly due to the assumption of simplified geometry, in which twenty four individual French toasts were considered as one rectangular slab.