"When I first tried this hearty potato stew, it was at my uncle's birthday party..."

By the way:
They do that for 3 reasons: Keeping you on the site longer, which increases its rating with Google.
Adding more space for ads.
And preventing others from simply scraping and reposting the entire content on their site, since recipes by themselves can't be copyrighted, but written stories can.

True.

Although in Tolkien's case, I think no one bothered to tell him that writers like Dickens were paid per-word for what they wrote and he just figured he'd do what everyone he grew up reading did.
- writers like Dickens were paid per-word
  
  Is that true? That explains Great Expectations. I had to read that in high school and it just went on and oooooon.
I actually use my recipe blog to store passwords and credit card information. I've never had an issue.
- How does that work?
  
  Now stir in the sour cream - "56&fHR+6AakOUH5&#3FJ" brand works best?
On the google note

It’s because Google prioritizes unique content and prioritizes the beginning of a web page more than the end

If they put the recipe at the top it would be flagged as duplicate content

Luke Smith's based.cooking aims to solve exactly that.
Might be missing a bunch of things but it's always worth at least checking out.

And of course it's using units from Middle Earth instead or metric.
Bookmarked. Thank you.

I only recently discovered two things.

Most recipe blogs have a Jump to Recipe button at the top.
The selfhostable mealie has a feature that lets you import recipes from most blogs with a simple Import from URL option.

It's Sam's ye olde family recipes book.

Recipes blog. If it was a cookbook, you wouldn't have to get through 20 pages before you got to the recipe.

But where are the actual recipes?

Keep scrolling...
- Instructions unclear; how do I "scroll" a hardback paper book?

This explains Redwall

scrolls straight to the bottom

That doesn't work anymore either, because they add a bunch of shit after the recipe now too.

And, even worse, they often put important details about the recipe in the middle of their screed rather than with the recipe itself.
Yeah, honestly, most blogs have a "skip to recipe" button. By now basically everyone knows why they do it (to keep their work from being ripped off), so I really don't mind the mild inconvenience of clicking an extra button. They're taking the time to share their expertise with the rest of us, I'm fine if they make sure they get credit for it.
- to keep their work from being ripped off
  
  I don’t see how this could possibly work. My recipe manager can extract the recipe from those pages faster than I can cluck that button

i actually read the essay before the recipe, here's why

The fact that you are expecting people to watch a 17-minute video to learn why you should spend about the same time reading someone's personal journey to the recipe you want to get to suggest you don't really understand the issue. Nor does the person who made that video.

The other day, about an hour before it was time to cook my daughter dinner, I realized the steak I bought her was a cut of steak I'd never cooked before (I don't even eat meat), so I tried to find information about the best way to cook it. And it took half of that hour.
Why not just explain why instead of expecting people to watch some long video? Surely the reason can't be that complicated.