Hi.
Seems like this mod and "Bery0za's Pure It", (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/bery0zas-pure-it), are incompatible with certain options enabled.
I get this error when starting Factorio with the standard mod settings:

Error loading mods
Failed to load mods: baron-sludge/data.lua:58 attempt to cocatenate field 'order' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
baron-sludge/data.lua:58: in function 'createUpgradedRecipe'
baron-sludge/data.lua:101: in function 'updateAllRecipes'
baron-sludge/data.lua:109: in main chunk

If I set "Enable Recipes For Pure Resources" to "none", both of the mods works.
Experimenting with only Baron Sludge activated and this option none/all, I dont see any difference. Going into "Recipe Book" mod the pure-recipes seems to be deactivated regardless what I set this mod setting to.

I have fixed the crashing error in version 1.0.8.

I'm unable to recreate the recipe book problem you described. I'm able to find both the pure recipes (e.g. Clay [Recipe]) and recipes that use them (e.g. Rail for Clay).