Pudding recipes are driving the most audience engagement on Instagram as food creators transition into autumnal cooking.
Rich and decadent desserts are coming to the fore and account for the top 32% of creator recipe posts from the past four weeks. This is an ongoing trend in 2024 as pudding content also performed well in Q2, suggesting brands can lean into it with confidence in campaigns. See Samah Lakha’s Mango Sago (10.2% ER) and Dane Pemberton’s Basque chocolate cheesecake (4.1% ER) for reference.
CORQ’s analysis of recipe content across 15,000 creator Instagram accounts also found cooking with seasonal ingredients is engaging audiences, particularly when they feature in hearty dishes. 18% of top recipes were in this genre while 10% showed consumers how to make comfort dishes. Julius Roberts’ aubergine parmigiana combined these two elements and achieved 3.7% ER.
Pasta ideas accounted for 12% of posts and the history of recipes trend, which began gaining traction in Q2, is still gathering pace, with 10% of creator food posts sharing family and cultural traditions in their content. A good example of this is Xiengni Zhou’s lemon chicken recipe (5.4% ER). A micro trend to watch? Recipes featuring pistachios, which were in 4% of posts, were most prominently in Emma Wills’ pistachio Ferrero Roche brownies (11.5% ER).
Also, to drive engagement quickly and increase campaign visibility, brands should brief creators to post Reels and show them cooking the food, and should also instruct their audiences to say in the comments if they want the recipe. This strategy has been improving recipe content performance throughout 2024 and Giuseppe Federici’s Reel (9.3% ER) is a good reference point.
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Going into autumn, brands should ensure pudding and “treat” content is part of their content plan, alongside comfort dishes. Combine these with seasonal ingredients and identify influencers who would be suitable to tell the bigger story of what a dish means to them or the significance it has in their culture.
Lastly, across all food content, implement the strategy of telling audiences to ask for the recipe to ensure the content gets the greatest possible promotion by Instagram’s algorithm.
By Sara McCorquodale, CEO and founder of CORQ.
