it will only work with primary, since primary considers first mat as base mat, and dont consider all of the formulas exactly as they should be.
Back in the days where we only had primary, we didnt make all the bows for example with wood+grass, we used Dragon Staff + bronze halberd + tooth haha
There are some other formulas of items, easier to obtain using primary than superior, and its really fun to try them out if you can afford.
For recipes that have multiple results, like grass+flower and skin+grass its actually a better way sometimes to use primary.
You can read this VERY old guide as reference and see how we used to compound back in the days
http://forum.wl.igg.com/viewthread.php?tid=3312