Note that most recipe blogs are fake. Someone wrote the original content long ago. Then, someone else hired a copywriter off a freelancing platform to change the words of the text just enough to avoid copyright violation, then put up a new copycat website loaded with SEO and ads. Look closely and notice how the author’s bio says e.g. "Born and bred in Lousiania and I love to share southern cooking", but the text contains grammatical mistakes typical of Eastern Europeans or Southeast Asians.
The ecosystem is already so advanced that new copycat recipe websites are often based on previous copycat recipe websites.
Is this true? I have a hard time believing it because it's a pretty naive assumption. A site that lets me get what I'm after quickly is generally going to be what I want.
How many people keep open 50+ tabs, or open a page and walk away?
I'm sure that time spent on a page, if it's given any weight, is given barely any. I'm sure returns to search to click a new link is a much higher indicator that the user didn't find what they wanted.
1 cup of flour, 2 eggs, 1 cup of milk, 2 tbsp of sugar, mix until smooth is a shitty pancake recipe (I think, it's close), but there aren't many ways to say that that makes it novel. Recipes are essentially instruction on how to build food.
Where copyright comes into play for cookbooks and recipe sites are presentation. And that includes the stories. So while the recipe itself doesn't enjoy copyright protection, writing "In the early autumn morning, my grandmother enjoyed making the family the most delicious pancakes, she started by going out to the chicken coop and sticking her whole hand up a chicken's ass to get only the freshest eggs possible..."
site:greatbritishchefs.com site:greatitalianchefs.com site:seriouseats.com
Anyway, it's pretty easy to turn this into a keyworded bookmark on Firefox for some quick searching:
https://duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=%s+(site%3Aseriouseats.com+%7C%7C+site%3Agreatbritishchefs.com+
%7C%7C+site%3Agreatbritishchefs.com+%7C%7C+site%3Athespruceeats.com+%7C%7C+site%3Abbcgoodfood.com)And of course the verbiage is a lot of long tail keyword inclusion (pandering to Google by talking about your diabetic grandma, etc).
EDIT: The whole "I can't stand recipes that have verbiage" diatribe is a bit of a beggars being choosers thing. Personally I pay for America's Test Kitchen and get trustworthy, concise recipes (although there is a narrative about different techniques and options), but most people are too cheap but simultaneously super demanding about the things they get for free.
There is, and has been, a very well known, nationally respected organization who does this, for years! Their recipe recommendations are usually good, and the narratives actually ADD to the recipe, by offering alternatives and reasons behind choices made, instead of just telling a nonsense story.
This recipe: https://wildwildwhisk.com/basic-buttermilk-scones/
Turns into this: https://www.justtherecipe.app/?url=https://wildwildwhisk.com...
I think there are Firefox and Chrome add-ons/extensions that do similar things.
Both are open source recipe sites meant to combat the blogspam and load quickly.
It's not for SEO, it's to demonstrate engagement to the advertisers. Scrolling past the markov fluff they give you to read "while you wait for that to come to a boil" counts as engagement.
I found Josh Weissman to have good recipes. You could also look for recipes by experienced chefs like by Munchies.
Also if you have more experience. You can look at a recipe and easily figure out if something is very wrong. Unfortunately, most things on cooking don't tell you how to "debug" recipes. You just cook often and hope you can figure things out.