Comment 4 for bug 154349

Actually, enabling the option does work, in fact, for the current session but will be reset for the next one.

Here is how to bypass this bug meanwhile a fix is released.
as root, add the following line to /etc/apt/apt.conf:

APT::Install-Recommends "1";

if /etc/apt/apt.conf does not exist (which is probably the case) create it.

Notice that you can't remove the option from Synaptic. You have to remove it by deleting that line from apt.conf

Cheers.