Most popular recipes and odd cravings – what we loved in 2015 / The Mercury Tasmania
written by Jan Davis and reprinted from The Mercury
ANOTHER year has come and almost gone. By now, most of us should be over the traditional Christmas food-induced coma and may have made it off the lounge, ready for New Year’s Eve celebrations.
While we’re still focused on food, however, it’s a good time to have a look at what was popular on our dinner tables in 2015.
The surprise of the year would have to be the appearance of Nutella on trendy tables around the country. While many of us have a jar of Nutella in the back of the cupboard, it has often been there so long that the use-by date is long past.
Yet, out of the blue, Australians couldn’t get enough of the stuff in 2015. It turned up in hot cross buns, in doughnuts, in frappes, and even in doughnut milkshakes (shudder).
Good Food magazine said that five of the top six most-shared stories on its social media channels this year were about the hazelnut chocolate spread. One of these stories was even about how our obsession with the spread had caused a shortage. Who’d have guessed?
According to Google, the most common recipe search during the year was for pancakes. Here’s one for your next dinner table trivia contest: the most commonly “how-to” question googled this year was “how to tie a tie”, followed by “how to cook pancakes”.
Pancake recipes were followed in popularity by recipes for slow-cookers, chicken, Thermomixes and lasagne.
How to make banana bread came in at number 10.
Comfort foods were also big on our cooking list this year. The goodfood.com.au website said its most-viewed recipes were, in the main, meaty. Celebrity chef Neil Perry’s chicken cacciatore was the most popular recipe, with nearly 350,000 views; and a classic roast chicken with bread and butter stuffing came in at number two.
Many Australians still don’t know how to poach an egg; and some step-by-step YouTube demonstrations were popular, according to Google. The trick is adding an acid such as lemon juice or vinegar to the boiling water before the eggs.
Quinoa was the top “how to cook” search ingredient in 2015, followed by rice, salmon, asparagus, pork belly, kale, beetroot, brown rice, steak and cous cous. Creative vegetarian dishes were popular, too, with a recipe for whole roasted cauliflower shared widely on Facebook.
And what do the crystal ball gazers see ahead for fashionable foodies for 2016?
Morris Miselowski, Business Futurist predicts that in 2016 Australians will be drinking more naked wines (wines made with minimal intervention) and embracing desserts that are more savoury than sweet (salted caramel, and dark chocolate with chilli).
We’ll be cooking over charcoal, and continuing to crave comfort food such as burgers.
International experts have been consistent in their predictions for broader food industry trends. Tech-driven delivery will be the big disrupter of restaurants and food service.
Aimed at the ultimate consumer convenience, we’ll see new services emerging with food brought quickly to homes, offices – wherever we want to eat. And the usual suspects are all racing for our doors. Already, in the US, uberEats will deliver a limited menu in 10 minutes and Amazon’s PrimeNow app promises entire menus at the door in under an hour.
Another disrupter gaining strength overseas is the meal kit: dinners-in-a-box containing exact portions of every ingredient and paint-by-numbers cooking instructions, often delivered on subscription.
People might start cooking again using trendy ingredients, without the bother of shopping. At about $14 a head, these may be cheaper than takeout. Look for celebrity chefs’ names attached to meal kits, restaurants developing their own dinners-in-a-box, and meal kits tailored for specific diets.
Pasta might soon be on the endangered species list. In the past five years, pasta sales have fallen by 8 per cent in Australia, 13 per cent in Europe and 25 per cent in Italy. Chefs will experiment with vegetable ribbons – zucchini, asparagus, sweet potatoes for example – replacing pasta. Vegetable spiralisers are selling like, well, hot cakes. Maybe spaghetti squash will have its limelight moment?
And last, but by no means least, the experts say vegetables are expected to push animal protein to the side of the plate or even entirely off it.
Rising meat prices, health-and-diet concerns, growth of farmers’ markets – all the stars have nicely aligned for our vegetable growers.
So there you have it – lots to look forward to. In 2016, may your table be laden with a veritable bounty of food to share with family and friends.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What do food trends and recipe popularity data reveal about broader cultural values and social anxieties?
Food trend data is one of the most revealing datasets about cultural values: what people choose to cook and eat reflects their identity aspirations (the cuisines they cook signal cultural affiliation and social aspiration), their health anxieties (the rise of specific dietary approaches tracks specific health concerns and wellness trends), their economic situation (recession cooking is different from prosperity cooking), and their social context (cooking for sharing on social media has different aesthetics from cooking for family utility). The 2015 Australian food data showed: the continued rise of Asian-influenced home cooking, reflecting both immigration demographics and the genuinely superior flavour profiles of Asian cuisine for Australian ingredient availability; the health anxiety pivot toward gluten-free, dairy-free, and ‘clean eating’ approaches that was more driven by wellness culture than clinical need for most practitioners; and the Instagram food aesthetic, which was beginning to shape both restaurant presentation and home cooking toward the visual.
Q: What does the ‘odd cravings’ signal reveal about the relationship between food and emotional state?
The ‘odd cravings’ phenomenon — the specific foods people seek during stress, uncertainty, or emotional intensity — reveals: food is one of the most immediate and accessible forms of emotional regulation available to most people; the comfort foods that dominate during periods of collective stress (economic downturns, pandemics, political uncertainty) are consistently carbohydrate-dense, familiar, and associated with childhood or family memory; and the social sharing of food cravings on social media has created a new form of collective emotional processing — when millions of people are simultaneously craving the same comfort foods and sharing that fact, it is a real-time signal about collective emotional state that is arguably more honest than survey data. The 2015 craving data was a signal about the underlying anxiety of a period that was prosperous on the surface but uncertain in its foundations.
Q: What is the connection between food culture signals and the broader consumer behaviour trends that matter for business?
For businesses, food culture signals matter beyond the food sector: the consumer values visible in food choices — health consciousness, sustainability concern, provenance interest, cultural openness, experience seeking — are consistent across consumption categories; the consumer who seeks ethically sourced, locally grown, seasonal produce applies similar values to clothing, accommodation, and financial products; and the food sector, because of its frequency and emotionality, is often the first place where emerging consumer values become commercially visible before they spread to adjacent categories. Reading food culture signals gives businesses outside the food sector early warning of consumer value shifts that will eventually affect their categories.
Q: How can I book Morris Misel for a consumer culture, food industry, or cultural trends keynote?
Contact the team at morrismisel.com/event-organisers.
written by Jan Davis and reprinted from The Mercury ANOTHER year has come and almost gone. By now, most of us should be over the traditional Christmas food-induced coma and may have made it off the lounge, ready for New Year’s Eve celebrations. While we’re still focused on food, .
When signals like Most popular recipes and odd cravings what we loved emerge, organisations that engage early have the advantage of choosing their response rather than reacting to events. That gap between those who prepared and those who did not is where competitive positioning is actually made or lost.
The most important question is not whether Most popular recipes and odd cravings what we loved will matter, but how quickly it will matter in your specific context. Leaders benefit most from mapping the ripple effects early — not just the direct impact but the second and third-order consequences that arrive later and hit harder. That is the practical work of foresight.
