I'm left-liberal British and am therefore expected to support the BBC I guess, but why in heaven this publicly-funded organisation has one recipe site, let alone two, baffles me.
BBC Good Food is funded by BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC. It is not funded by licence fee money. The website is a companion (or extension) of their BBC Good Food magazine.
The BBC Food website, on the other hand, is funded by the licence fee. Recipes from many of their food programmes are published here, but much more too. It's grown to be much more than just a companion to their food programmes. But now, with little support from the public, they've decided to close the site.
Before the internet was a thing, cookery programs used to end with the information that the recipes featured in the program could be found on Ceefax, or you could send a self-addressed envelope into BBC TV center and they would mail the recipes out to you. It seems like an obvious and natural use of the web for the BBC to provide the same information on a web page that it used to provide.
The BBC Food website, on the other hand, is funded by the licence fee. Recipes from many of their food programmes are published here, but much more too. It's grown to be much more than just a companion to their food programmes. But now, with little support from the public, they've decided to close the site.