About
The character 馇 (chā) is the simplified form of 餷, a phono-semantic compound in culinary terminology. Its left-side semantic radical 饣 (shí), a simplified form of 食, indicates a connection to food or cooking. The right-side phonetic component 查 (chá) provides the pronunciation. As a dialectal verb, it means to boil food until it becomes very soft or mushy. It can also function as a noun for the resulting thick, porridge-like dish found in some regional Chinese cuisines.