I’ve never cured anything, so I’m going out on a limb doing this, and in on a timeline that doesn’t leave much room for error. At best, I estimate I’d have two good dry runs to figure out the flavor.
And yeah, ingredients flavors & chemical effects in a recipe can vary greatly depending on how they’re used.
The best example I ever got with that was when I got my hands on an 80yr old recipe for a restaurant’s garlic slaw. I don’t care for most coleslaws, but THIS one I’d drive out of my way for. So when the restaurant went under, I was quite unhappy…until I found out they’d published the recipe in the local newspaper. I looked it up, and took a stab at it.
Among other things, the recipe explicitly called for freshly minced garlic. I didn’t want to go through the trouble of cleaning the amount of garlic required, so I used home of the jarred minced stuff. It didn’t taste right. I added more. No good. I added garlic powder. Better, but it still wasn’t right. I broke down and minced fresh garlic in the amount listed in the recipe.
Perfection.
None of the other forms of garlic made any meaningful contributions to the slaw’s proper flavor.
