Introduction:
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a drastic change in everyone’s lifestyle. With stay at home orders all around the world, this additional time has resulted in people nurturing old hobbies and developing new ones. With the closure of restaurants or the fear of ordering from outside, cooking and trying out new recipes found on the internet was one of the most common past times picked up by people.
Research Methodology:
To understand what new recipes individuals have learned to cook during the Covid-19 pandemic analysing data from Google.com would be accurate as it’s the most commonly used search engine across the US.
Google’s search predictions for the query “Recipe for” can be used to analyse the popularity of searches based on the geographical location. Search Prediction takes into consideration the most commonly searched phrases when a word is typed out. To understand the most popular recipe of each state in America, the geographic location of Google search engine result page (SERP) should be changed. This can be done by choosing the geographic location of each state by manually entering the longitude and latitude coordinates (this can be found on Google Maps). The topmost suggestion from Google was taken into consideration for each state for the search query “Recipe For “.
For example, while typing “recipe for ” in Google search box from Arizona, we get the following results:
Hypothesis:
The additional free time in the quarantine has resulted in people trying to find activities that take a long time. Recipes that are time-intensive are likely to be more popular. Baked goods like bread, cake, cookies, etc. are more likely to be searched on Google.com.
Research Data:
| # | State | Recipe Suggested by Google |
| 1 | Alabama | SOS (Creamy Hamburger Sauce) |
| 2 | Alaska | Banana Bread |
| 3 | Arizona | Scones |
| 4 | Arkansas | Banana Bread |
| 5 | California | Hamburgers |
| 6 | Colorado | Meatloaf |
| 7 | Connecticut | Scones |
| 8 | Delaware | Scones |
| 9 | Florida | Scones |
| 10 | Georgia | Scones |
| 11 | Hawaii | Scones |
| 12 | Idaho | Potato Bread |
| 13 | Illinois | Banana Bread |
| 14 | Indiana | Scones |
| 15 | Iowa | Banana Bread |
| 16 | Kansas | Scones |
| 17 | Kentucky | Scones |
| 18 | Louisiana | Scones |
| 19 | Maine | Scones |
| 20 | Maryland | Banana Bread |
| 21 | Massachusetts | Meatloaf |
| 22 | Michigan | Meatloaf |
| 23 | Minnesota | Banana Bread |
| 24 | Mississippi | Scones |
| 25 | Missouri | Scones |
| 26 | Montana | Scones |
| 27 | Nebraska | Apple Crisp |
| 28 | Nevada | Banana Bread |
| 29 | New Hampshire | Banana Bread |
| 30 | New Jersey | Banana Bread |
| 31 | New Mexico | Scones |
| 32 | New York | Scones |
| 33 | North Carolina | Scones |
| 34 | North Dakota | Scones |
| 35 | Ohio | Bread |
| 36 | Oklahoma | Banana Bread |
| 37 | Oregon | Bread |
| 38 | Pennsylvania | Bread |
| 39 | Rhode Island | Banana Bread |
| 40 | South Carolina | Banana Bread |
| 41 | South Dakota | Banana Bread |
| 42 | Tennessee | Banana Bread |
| 43 | Texas | Banana Bread |
| 44 | Utah | Banana Bread |
| 45 | Vermont | Banana Bread |
| 46 | Virginia | Banana Bread |
| 47 | Washington | Banana Bread |
| 48 | West Virginia | Scones |
| 49 | Wisconsin | Scones |
| 50 | Wyoming | Pancakes |
Research Results:
Data collected from every state mostly indicates a trend where recipes for pastries and baked goods are the most searched. Few interesting observations:
- The most popular recipe searched was for Scones, with the top autocompleted search in states like Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, New York, etc. Scones were the topmost predicted search for the term ‘recipe for’ in 20 different states.
- Bread and its different variants were fairly popular, having the most predicted search in 23 different states. ‘Banana Bread’ was the most popular searched term associated with bread with a total of 19 searches, followed by the term ‘bread’ with 3 searches and ‘potato bread’ being the most searched recipe in the state of Idaho.
- The recipe for Pancakes was the most popular in the state of Wyoming.
- Nebraska, a state famous for its apple orchards had apple crisps as the most popular searched recipe on Google.
- Meatloaf was popular in states like Colorado, Michigan and Massachusetts.
- Certain states differed from the trend of breakfast foods and baked goods like in Alaska the top searched recipe of Creamy Hamburger Sauce or SOS and Hamburgers were the top searched recipe in California.
Original research done by Deepthishree Yethirajyam for sproutandpress.com, posted by Isabelle Johhson
Isabelle Johnson is a fitness expert and yoga trainer with over 12 years of experience as a dietician. Her knowledge of nutritional facts has made her take to the web with her blog, Sprout and Press.
Isabelle lets her audience understand products used in the kitchen, which can improve your diet, add more convenient ways to juice, create smoothies, and do so much more. Her blog informs readers about the newest kitchenware and the benefits each ingredient brings to the table. In 2016, sproutandpress.com was founded to share her knowledge with the world and inspire a better, healthier tomorrow.
