changing recipe for item from different mod?

I've made a lot of small mods of my own and now I am making one larger one which the whole point of is that it is compatible with, and changes some things of the other mods.

These changes include using materials provided by the main mod for items in the other mods. For example a Sword from Mod A uses vanilla materials to craft, but when Mod B is installed also, the Sword uses Mod B's materials to craft.

I know something can be done to overwrite vanilla recipes, but can this be done the same way or is it more complicated?