Culinary While mildly toxic when raw, the nut is appreciated in many cultures once cooked or toasted. In
Indonesian and
Malaysian cuisine, it is commonly used in curries, and on the Indonesian island of
Java, it is used to make a thick sauce that is eaten with vegetables and rice. A Hawaiian condiment known as
ʻinamona is made from roasted kukui mixed into a paste with salt.
ʻInamona is a key ingredient in traditional Hawaiian
poke.
Other uses preparing candlenut sticks to illuminate a festival The kernel is the source of
candlenut oil, which has no known toxicity and is not an irritant, even to the eyes. In
ancient Hawaiʻi, kukui fruits were burned to provide light. The nuts were strung in a row on a palm leaf midrib, lit on one end, and burned one by one every fifteen minutes or so. This led to their use as a measure of time. Hawaiians extracted the oil from the nut and burned it in a stone oil lamp called a (light, darkness goes) with a wick made of
kapa cloth. Hawaiians had many other uses for the tree, including
leis from the shells, leaves, and flowers; ink for tattoos from charred nuts; a
varnish with the oil; and fishermen would chew the nuts and spit them on the water to break the
surface tension and remove reflections, giving them greater underwater visibility. A red-brown dye made from the inner bark was used on
kapa and
aho (
Touchardia latifolia cordage). A coating of kukui oil helped preserve
ʻupena (
fishing nets). The trunk was sometimes used to make smaller canoes used for fishing. The oil can often be found in Indonesian hair-care products. In Fiji, where the nut is called
sikeci, the oil is used in cosmetic products. Wealthier members of the
Batak people have their coffins (Karo:
pelangkah) made from the wood, carved in the shape of a boat whose bow is decorated with the carved head of a
hornbill, a horse, or a
mythical beast known as a
singa. In the Philippines, the fruit and tree are traditionally known as
lumbang, after which
Lumban, a lakeshore town in
Laguna province, is named. Before the intrusion of non-native species, it was frequently used as a property-line manager because its silvery underleaf makes the tree easy to distinguish from a distance. In the state of
Sabah,
Malaysian Borneo, the Dusun tribes call the fruit
godou and use it in tattoo-making as an optional ingredient for the ink. As recently as 1993 on the outlying islands of the kingdom of Tonga, candlenuts were chewed into sweet-scented
emollient used during a traditional
funerary ritual. They were used for making various sweet-smelling oils for the skin. In Australia,
Aboriginal Australians used them for a variety of similar purposes. In
Flores near
Ende, it is called
kéloré and used as a
mordant for dyes with
Morinda citrifolia (
mengkudu). On the island of
Rapa Iti in the
Austral Islands, fish hooks were carved from the endocarp of the candlenut as a result of lacking other suitable material. These fish hooks were quite small and were used for catching certain species of fish, such as
Leptoscarus vaigiensis () and
Stegastes fasciolatus (). == In culture ==