Why aren't recipes protected as intellectual property?

I was watching Top Chef Masters and this question popped into my head. Recipes can easily be categorized as intellectual property, but no one goes after people who cook these recipes. I don’t see any difference between a band covering a song and a person cooking a recipe.

Explain please. Are these laws just used to make money, or are we really protecting the ideas and labor that people put into their work? And if the latter is the case, why are songs (as one example) protected, but recipes are not? Or is it something all together different?