卤 (lǔ): to stew in soy sauce and spices

Meanings

1 to stew in soy sauce and spices
2 to braise in a master stock
3 brine; spiced sauce

Characters

卤

lǔ

to braise in spiced stock; brine

Examples

这块肉卤了两个小时,特别入味。

Zhèkuài ròu lǔ le liǎng gè xiǎoshí, tèbié rùwèi.

This meat was braised for two hours — really flavorful.

台湾的卤肉饭是经典小吃。

Táiwān de lǔròufàn shì jīngdiǎn xiǎochī.

Taiwan's lu rou fan is a classic street food.

Tips

culture

卤 is a signature Chinese cooking method: simmering meat, eggs or tofu in a spiced master stock (卤水) of soy sauce, star anise, cinnamon, and rock sugar. Famous dishes: 卤肉饭 (Taiwan braised pork rice), 卤鸡蛋 (soy-braised eggs), 卤味 (cold deli-style braised snacks).

Components

radical

卜 bǔ

divination crack

Top two strokes are the indexing radical 卜 (also written ⺊ here), filing 卤 next to 占 divine, 卦 trigram. The placement is filing-only: 卤 originally pictured a sack of brine, not a divination crack — the radical was chosen on visual convenience.

semantic

囗 wéi

enclosure

Outer enclosure 囗 represents the salt-sack or salt-flat boundary holding the brine. It walls off the inner dots that picture the salt crystals themselves — the whole graph captures the briny pool that gave 卤 'brine; to braise in spiced sauce'.

semantic

乂 yì

crossing strokes (here salt grains)

Inside the enclosure, the two crossed strokes stand for the salt crystals or dripping brine collected within. Modern cooking sense — 卤味 braised in master-stock — preserves the same image of food steeping in a flavoured liquid.

Radical

Salt Kangxi #197

Originally a pictograph of a salt-pan or brine vessel — the dots inside the frame are crystallizing salt. Indexes a small set of characters about salt and saline land: 鹾 (salt), 鹼 (alkali; modern simplified 碱). The cooking sense (braised in soy/spice stock) is a metaphorical extension that overshadowed the radical role.