Sugar – Substitute for jaggery in chutney

The average of four different recipes that use apples or pears to make a chutney suggest the ratios

1.3lb of fruit : 1 cups of sugar : 0.9 cup of vinegar

or in units related to the metric system

300g of fruit : 100g of sugar : 100ml of vinegar

The fruit weight is for peeled and cored apples or pears, the 0.9 cups is the same as filling a cup and then taking out 2 tablespoons.

If you add cayenne to the recipe you may want to increase the sugar a bit. If you add raisins, decrease the sugar.

If you end up with 6kg of diced apples, then use 2kg of sugar and 2l of vinegar.

Harold McGee tackled alkaline noodles a while back. He found that baking baking soda actually changes it from sodium bicarbonate to sodium carbonate. This is a reasonable substitute for the kansui called for in alkaline noodles and can be substituted 1:1 in recipes. The noodles may not get AS yellow as they would with both alkalines present in kansui but it's a small price to pay for not having to hunt down that ingredient.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/dining/15curious.html?_r=0

The key part:

Just spread a layer of soda on a foil-covered baking sheet and bake it at 250 to 300 degrees for an hour. You’ll lose about a third of the soda’s weight in water and carbon dioxide, but you gain a stronger alkali. Keep baked soda in a tightly sealed jar to prevent it from absorbing moisture from the air. And avoid touching or spilling it. It’s not lye, but it’s strong enough to irritate.