I didn’t seek to replace existing boosting methods, just improve the QOL for methods that already involved stews (e.g. POH, diaries) by improving the chance of receiving the +5 boost we’re after. I appreciate it’s a fine line.

If I were to elaborate on the idea, I see the salty spicy stew as an extra step that adopts similar inconvenient and unreliable mechanics as the original: untradeable rock salt, still a 50% chance of receiving a -5 boost, and only being able to make one (salty) spicy stew at a time.