I think a large part of it is that the standard form of recipes is designed for commercial kitchens, not for home cooking. In a commercial kitchen, you'll have

I think a large part of it is that the standard form of recipes is designed for commercial kitchens, not for home cooking. In a commercial kitchen, you'll have one recipe that has been finely tuned, with the ingredients pre-selected, and the goal is to follow that recipe. The long list of items is useful for prep work, because that lets you know how to set up the station for making that particular dish. But for home cooking, your ingredients are already chosen, and the goal is to make a dish out of them. This is also why the prep time is so unrealistic. It assumes that you already have your onions finely minced, your garlic peeled, your oven heated, and your portions measured. The only time when that's a useful measurement is if somebody already did all the prep work early that morning, and you need to know how many cooks to have covering the dinner shift. If you're cooking at home, then the relevant time is how long it will take including the prep work and measuring.