Widely popular during the first lockdown, since nearly half of French people (49%) visited them during the month of April, compared to one third last year at the same time (35%), cooking recipe websites⁽¹⁾ seem to have gained new followers. In September 2020, 24.9 million Internet users browsed recipe websites (39% of French people), 1.4 million more than one year ago.

The community is still mainly made up of women (they represent 63.8% of visitors to recipe websites and apps, while they represent only 51.8% of Internet users) and working people (62.0% of visitors, compared to 52.2% of Internet users).

In terms of time spent, pregnant women are particularly prone to over-consuming these recipe websites and apps, since they have a time affinity index(2) of 177, just like fans of jogging (index 137).

Finally, vegetarians also reveal strong affinity with this universe (time affinity 169), they therefore spend time surfing recipe websites, even not those not specialising in vegetarianism.

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To find out more about the profile of these targets,click here.

Internet users who are used to working from home several times a week throughout the year (even before the health crisis) also tend to over-consume recipe websites (time affinity index of 151). Over-consumption usually occurs at weekends, when they spend 3 times more time on recipe sites than on weekdays (time affinity 246).

In contrast, new home workers, those who have been doing it at least once a week since March, have a lower time affinity index, of 114, but which rises to 139 at weekends. Those over 50 are the only age group to have a higher affinity index on weekdays (141) than at weekends (137).

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To find out more about the profile of home workers, click here.

Finally, the lockdown has had many effects on the internet consumption of young people, and cooking is no exception to this: in this universe, the time affinity index of 25-34-year olds has increased dramatically over the past year. The time affinity index of this heterogeneous target, which brings together very different moments of life, peaked at 174 in July.

Although their over-consumption of recipe websites has tended to decline again since August, the time affinity is still higher in September than before the crisis.

⁽¹⁾ Top 10 recipe websites (monthly audience, September 2020): Marmiton (B), Le Journal des Femmes Cuisine (C), cuisineAZ.com (B), 750g.com (B), Cuisine Actuelle (C), Chef Simon (B), Cookomix (B), PetitChef (B), Papilles et Pupilles (B), Hervé Cuisine (B)

⁽²⁾ Definition of the time spent affinity index: the time spent affinity expresses the over-representation of the target in Total Time for the category, compared to its weight in Total Internet Time. Unless otherwise stated, the affinity indices are those for June 2020 (Targets+ study)