People have strong opinions about Thanksgiving side dishes. Some are mashed potato loyalists while others stuffing purists. And not everyone agrees about the relative merits of sweet potato dishes.
But where you stand on these debates might actually come down to where in the country you live. The folks at DoorDash released a Thanksgiving Trends report breaking down the most-ordered fixings in each state.
“Turkey may get the spotlight, but the sides are where Thanksgiving gets personal,” Cristen Milliner, a consumer trends expert at DoorDash, told HuffPost. “What stood out to us wasn’t just which sides were popular, but how they clustered geographically, almost like regional dialects rooted in place, history and habit.”
The findings are based on the most-ordered grocery items for popular Thanksgiving side dishes during Thanksgiving week last year.
“Our data shows that the South gravitates toward sweeter, warmer flavors like sweet potatoes and cornbread, the Midwest leans creamy and comforting with mashed potatoes, and the Northeast skews more vegetable-forward,” Milliner said. “It’s the same holiday tradition expressed in different local ‘languages.’”
DoorDash isn’t the only company that that looked into Americans’ Thanksgiving food preferences this year. Google also released some Turkey Day trends data.
Specifically, the tech company broke down the top searched Thanksgiving side dishes based on Google queries from Oct. 10 to Nov. 10 this year.
The uncontested winner was stuffing, which dominated in the overwhelming majority of states. But cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, deviled eggs and green bean casserole got a little love as well.
“I anticipated there would be more variety on the map, definitely more states searching for sweet potato casserole, but that wasn’t the case,” Jenny Lee, Google Trends’ lead analyst, told HuffPost. “I love to see what people are cooking up to see if it could inspire me to try something new.”
Although Lee said she doesn’t particularly like stuffing, she knows others clearly do enjoy the holiday staple.
“I hope people have fun looking at the data and seeing what they can relate to,” Lee said. “If you have family members around the country, it would be a great activity to see how your home states differ with their preferences.”
Dining and Cooking