Notable ingredients include seafood such as fish, octopus (heke), eel, sea snails (pipi) and crustaceans (lobster), as well as sweet potato, taro, banana, pineapple, coconut, pumpkin, and poultry, pork and lamb meat.

Po'e, pudding made of mashed bananas, pumpkin and flour is baked in the umu pae as well.

[2] Easter Island was first settled in 800CE-1200CE by Polynesian explorers from Eastern Polynesia, bringing numerous plant and animal species with them.

The crops that did thrive were sweet potato (kumara), taro, yams (uhi), bananas (maika), calabash (hue), ti, sugarcane (toa), giant taro (kape), turmeric (pua), arrowroot (pia) and malay apple (haia),[3][4] as well as chickens (moa) and rats (kiore).

Vast areas of forest were cleared for agriculture, but with the island’s exposure to wind and periodic droughts, circular stone walls called Manavai were erected to shelter crops and conserve moisture.