The main issue with the rewrites is clashes, not maintainability, since that code would have worked in 3.1 and 3.4 and is unlikely to break, and if it did there’d be deprecated notices for a few versions.
I would suggest using renamed posts, but instead use code like this:
function change_post_menu_label() {
global $menu;
global $submenu;
$menu[5][0] = 'Recipes';
$submenu['edit.php'][5][0] = 'Recipes';
$submenu['edit.php'][10][0] = 'Add Recipes';
$submenu['edit.php'][16][0] = 'Recipe Tags';
echo '';
}
function change_post_object_label() {
global $wp_post_types;
$labels = &$wp_post_types['post']->labels;
$labels->name="Recipes";
$labels->singular_name="Recipe";
$labels->add_new = 'Add Recipe';
$labels->add_new_item = 'Add Recipe';
$labels->edit_item = 'Edit Recipe';
$labels->new_item = 'Recipes';
$labels->view_item = 'View Recipes';
$labels->search_items="Search Recipes";
$labels->not_found = 'No Recipes found';
$labels->not_found_in_trash="No Recipes found in Trash";
}
add_action( 'init', 'change_post_object_label' );
add_action( 'admin_menu', 'change_post_menu_label' );