The General Theory of Chutney

I am talking English chutney here.  Indian Chutney is normally either a spice paste or jam with vinegar in it.  In fact I made some great apricot chutney once by taking some apricot jam, adding vinegar, boiling and Jarring it up.
English chutney is the sort of thing you have with cheese or ham, not curry.  And it is made of three components.
1) Mucilage.  Things that turn into a paste when boiled,  This defaults to Bramley apple but can include swede, tomato, sweet potato etc.
2) Star ingredient. This is the headline taste.  Green tomato.  Runner bean. Courgette.  whatever.
3) Chunks and spices.  For flavour and bite.  Onion, mustard seed, coriander seed , cardamom pods...

Now How To..

First sterilise your clean jars and lids.  i normally rinse them and put in the oven at 120 C for 20 mins.

Then chop your mucilage material fine and add enough vinegar to just cover. I am using swede and apple.

Boil it until it softens, then smush up to a lumpy paste

Add your headline ingredients and chunks and spices.  Here you see runner bean, onion, mustard and coriander seeds.  Simmer until the chunks soften.  How soft depends on your taste but they will soften more in the jar.

Finally add sugar to taste.  When you add the sugar more liquid will magically appear and you will need to boil this off.  At this point you have to keep stirring because once the sugar is in it will burn on the bottom easily.  Once it has little to no liquid on the surface when boiling it is done.

Put it into jars using a jam funnel, wipe round the rim with clean kitchen paper being careful not to burn your hands, then PUT THE LIDS ON WHEN IT IS HOT.
Allow to cool and label it up.
That general procedure will chutney anything.

I prefer half pound (fuck off metric I cook in Imperial) jars for chutney as it is an easier size to use.