The Nector Ledger / 21 August 2026

The case for jaggery

Refined white sugar is efficient and characterless. Jaggery is what sweetness tasted like before the mills.

Refined white sugar is efficient and completely characterless. Jaggery — gur — is what sweetness tasted like before mills stripped it clean.

It's unrefined cane (or palm) sugar, set into blocks, cubes, or ground to powder, and it keeps a warm, caramel-molasses depth that plain sugar simply doesn't have.

How to use it

Use it the way you'd use sugar, with two small habits: add it at the end when there's hot milk involved, since it can split boiling milk, and taste as you go, because its sweetness reads a little differently.

Beyond that — chai, kheer, chikki, chutney, or just a cube after a meal, the way it's always been eaten.

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