The performance of conventional box type solar cookers can be improved by better designs of cooking vessels with proper understanding of the heat flow to the material to be cooked. An attempt has been made in this article to arrive at a mathematical model to understand the heat flow process to the cooking vessel and thereby to the food material. The mathematical model considers a double glazed hot box type solar cooker loaded with two different types of vessels, kept either on the floor of the cooker or on lugs. The performance of the cooking vessel with a central cylindrical cavity is compared with that of a conventional cylindrical cooking vessel. It is found from the experiments and modeling that the cooking vessel with a central cylindrical cavity on lugs results in a higher temperature of the thermic fluid than that of a conventional vessel on the floor or on lugs. The average improvement of performance of the vessel with a central cylindrical cavity kept on lugs is found to be 5.9% and 2.4% more than that of a conventional cylindrical vessel on the floor and on lugs, respectively. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.