I believe you've got the cause and effect completely backwards. Someone that has a recipe site with no ads and no stories isn't in it for the money. In contrast, recipe sites with a ton of ads solely exist for the ad revenue—the recipes are just there as bait.
The difference is that the ad-laden sites spend 90% of their time getting their rankings up in google, the recipes are usually taken/copied from elsewhere and the big long stories are there to make the site look unique to Google, to fool it into thinking there's legitimate content there.
In the end, of course the person who spends all their time gaming Google is going to rank higher than someone who actually cares about their recipes and spends 90% of their time curating, experimenting, etc.
It's a sad state of affairs, but spammers have ruined Google.
The difference is that the ad-laden sites spend 90% of their time getting their rankings up in google, the recipes are usually taken/copied from elsewhere and the big long stories are there to make the site look unique to Google, to fool it into thinking there's legitimate content there.
In the end, of course the person who spends all their time gaming Google is going to rank higher than someone who actually cares about their recipes and spends 90% of their time curating, experimenting, etc.
It's a sad state of affairs, but spammers have ruined Google.