[account42]

You also often have ingredients or intermediate products that are used in more than one step so a tree is not ideal. You could duplicate those ingredients/intermediates but that would not be helpful.

And for more complex meals, time planning becomes more important so that everything is ready to serve together.

[stevage]

To be honest, I kind of prefer when a recipe treats duplicate ingredients as completely separate. Rather than that "use 300g of the butter here, use the rest here" approach which is harder to follow.

[yencabulator]

That works well for a basic off-the-shelf ingredient, but what if you needed a complex dressing/sauce/broth/marinade/spice mix that was later used in multiple combinations. You'd want to make that all in one batch.