I believe WordPress can be great for a membership site.

I've seen a few recipe plugins for WordPress, and there are a ton of membership plugins. Most will allow you to restrict content based on membership levels. So you can create a custom post type for recipes (most recipe plugins would do this), and configure the membership plugin to restrict access based on your business rules.

Chris Lema has awesome reviews of membership plugins (https://chrislema.com/memberships-plugins/). Chris is also on Clarity and he knows his stuff. So feel free to dig through his reviews and connect with him.

One suggestion: Don't get bogged down / excited by features of membership plugins. Focus on your customers, their needs and pain points.

"Oh.. this plugin can do this.. So let me add that feature to my business" - is wrong line of thinking!