料理
りょうり · ryouri · JLPT N5 · noun
cuisine
🍳🍱 料理 = ingredients (料) + arrange/logic (理): putting ingredients in order
料 means materials or ingredients (as in 材料, materials); 理 means reason or to put in order (as in 理由, reason). Cooking is literally managing your ingredients. Sound hook: ryouri starts like the name Ryo — Ryo's speciality is cooking.
料 — rice 米 + dipper 斗
料 combines 米 (rice/grain) with 斗 (a measuring dipper), depicting the act of measuring out grain. From this concrete sense it extended to 'to measure, estimate, anticipate' and to 'materials' (things measured out for use), as in 材料 'materials' and 预料 'to anticipate'.
理 — jade radical 玉/王 + village 里 (phonetic)
理 is a semantic-phonetic compound: the jade radical 王 (玉) on the left signals meaning, while 里 on the right gives the sound. It originally meant the natural veins or grain in a piece of jade, then extended to 'pattern,' 'order,' 'principle,' and finally the modern senses 'reason' and 'to manage.'