10.7.4 InstallESD Installer automatically creates a Recovery HD?

Yes. 10.7.4 InstallESD creates the Recovery HD.

10.7.3 did that too, and I'm pretty sure the ones before as well

If 10.7.3 did this, then why go through the trouble of creating an image of the Recovery HD in https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/article.html?id=173 ?

It's the way you package/capture the OS.

Those methods just capture the OS partition & not the recovery one, hence the need to lay it down seperately.

If you compile in Casper Admin a Lion OS, the DMG that Casper Admin creates is then partitioned by the Lion installer & thus creates both partitions.

I think compiling the image is only necessary if you're using netboot.
I don't use netboot- way too many low bandwidth sites in my org and I don't want to set up netboot appliances at each one, so we image by booting off of USB drives. All I do is upload the installESD through casper admin, add it to a config, and image- recovery partitions are created with no extra work at all. It's worked this way for me with every version of Lion.

@nkalister but what about admin account, and basic settings for that image? how do you capture them?

@wmateo you can use a script to set up the settings, something along the lines of @rtrouton's might work for you with some tweaks:
https://github.com/rtrouton/rtrouton_scripts/tree/master/rtrouton_scripts/first_boot

What we do to create a local admin is simply create a policy that makes the local admin account on enrollment.

Wmateo- we don't capture anything- settings are applied from scripts, like emily said.
accounts are created through packages or scripts- Mager Valp has a nice account creation pkg up on github, or you can create an account in your firstboot script using dscl.