One way to see the recommands is to run aptitude --without-recommends in a fresh chroot. Some results.. I've marked packages that I feel are probably wrong to be pulled in via recommends with asterisks.
aptitude --without-recommends install '~t^desktop$' ... The following packages are RECOMMENDED but will NOT be installed: ** aspell-ar aspell-bg aspell-br aspell-ca aspell-cs aspell-cy aspell-da aspell-de aspell-de-alt aspell-el aspell-en aspell-eo aspell-es aspell-et aspell-fa aspell-fi aspell-fo aspell-fr aspell-ga aspell-gl-minimos aspell-he aspell-hr aspell-hu aspell-is aspell-it aspell-ku aspell-lt aspell-nl aspell-no aspell-pl aspell-pt-br aspell-pt-pt aspell-ro aspell-ru aspell-sk aspell-sl aspell-sv aspell-tl aspell-uk aspell-uz ** bcc bzip2 *courier-mta* debconf-utils *esmtp-run* esound-clients *exim* exim4 *exim4-daemon-heavy* *exim4-daemon-light* fam gcc **gcc-2.95 gcc-3.3 gcc-3.4 gcc-4.1 gcc272** gimp-svg gnome-icon-theme gnome-media gutenprint-locales hicolor-icon-theme libatk1.0-data libft-perl libgcj7-awt libgcj7-jar libgda2-bin libglib2.0-data libgnomevfs2-extra libgtk2.0-bin libpaper-utils linuxprinting.org-ppds *masqmail* mdetect *msmtp-mta* nbsmtp nmap *nullmailer* pconf-detect *perl-doc* *postfix* psfontmgr python-reportlab *sendmail-bin smail smbclient ssmtp* tcc x-ttcidfont-conf *xmail* xml-core xsltproc *zeroconf* aptitude --without-recommends install '~t^standard$' The following packages are RECOMMENDED but will NOT be installed: ca-certificates checkpolicy debconf-utils *perl-doc* psmisc *setools* *wbritish* -- see shy jo
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