[mtm7]

> What is the reason that every single recipe site, without fail, follows this same horrible pattern? I.e. the twenty paragraph "When I was a child growing up in Atlanta..." followed by a crappy in-house video player followed by, finally, the actual recipe?

I lived with a food blogger for six years and might be able to provide some more perspective for these types of comments (beyond just SEO).

First, there's actually an audience that _is_ interested in this type of content. Some are repeat readers who want to follow food bloggers' lives, similar to how HN readers might follow a streamer on Twitch. It's a much more rewarding journey if people don't just see you as a recipe database and bounce, but actually engage with you and follow you over time.

Second, a lot of food bloggers simply enjoy writing and see their blogs as a way to express themselves. Some of them write these stories for their family and friends and didn't think they'd be at the top of Google.

Third, it takes a ton of effort to write a single recipe. I can't speak for others, but hers involved multiple days of planning/cooking/shooting, remaking it several times so she knew it'd be consistent for the reader, planning/shooting/editing the photos, and even scrapping recipes altogether if they didn't work out. She also had to deal with the business end of things (like getting a lawyer, accountant, social media manager, and managing contracts with sponsors). Her attitude was basically, "if I'm doing all of these things to provide someone with a free recipe, they can scroll past my story if they don't feel like reading it". (That being said, her site was pretty minimalist compared to other food blogs – she didn't run ads.)

FWIW, I don't have a problem with onlyrecipe.app, I just wanted to share this because I'd be interested if I didn't know already.

[slingnow]

I have yet to meet or read about a single person who has ever said "I really enjoy scrolling through twenty paragraphs of backstory and embedded auto-play videos and advertisements while I browse for recipes."

So while I'm sure there exist bloggers who put care into these things, a tiny minority of people seem to find any value there. In fact it now seems that so many people are aggravated by this style that an app to remove them all has been developed.

[rbone80]

Also the story is one thing but the painfully verbose explanation of each ingredient is ridiculous. I really don’t want or need an explanation of flour, sugar, salt, etc… That’s the content that really makes me annoyed at a blog recipe.

Like many others I have mostly abandoned blogs in favor of tried and true cookbooks.

[SllX]

As with all things written: the writing is there for the audience who will read it, not the people that will not.

[lazyasciiart]

I'm not sure that 'people you haven't met' is necessarily a tiny minority.