THE LYCHEE NUT , dressed for dinner, is a pale, testicular fellow, bobbing in sweet syrup and generally putting in an appearance as part of a dessert course toward the end of grand Chinese meals. There is an odd gelatinous texture in the mouth, never quite to my taste, and a smothering sugariness that pretty well masks whatever native flavors the lychee nut might possess.

For of course it does possess them, and of course it isn't really a nut but a fruit. In fact, in its preprocessed state, it's quite a lovely fruit; it resembles an oblong, lacquered strawberry with goose bumps. I made this discovery at the end of a recent dinner party whose leavings included uneaten fresh lychee nuts. When they were first presented, along with fruit salad, I thought they might be purely ornamental, like those fake holly berries you sometimes find on holiday wreaths. Alternate theory: they were pieces of sugar candy made up like strawberries. Bit into one and recoiled. You have to peel them, the hostess gently admonished us. Very well: We did so and found, beneath the red crust, a glint of opalescence that turned out to be a rather shallow layer of soft flesh, distinctly melon-like in flavor, draped about a large central pit.

It was agreed that fresh lychee nuts, though comely, offer a disappointing yield of pleasure when actually eaten. It was further agreed that I would take them home to see what else might be done with them short of chucking them in the compost bin. The obvious thing would be to can them, but I am not a canner. So ... into the cookbooks for ideas, recipes, suggestions, hints, even.

Now I must report my findings, which are thin and would be nonexistent if not for Daovone Xayavong, who in her cookbook Taste of Laos (SLG Books, $15.95) offers a pair of recipes for lychee whip and lychee shake. The former, though hardly complex, does call for Jell-O, which I do not stock. The second is basically two cups of milk and a half cup of sugar in a blender with a pound of lychee nuts, duly peeled and seeded. Or you can use the canned kind, if that is your fancy or what you keep in stock.

As of this writing, I have not yet made the lychee shake or added Jell-O to my shopping list or for that matter disturbed the lychee nuts themselves. They repose in their little clear plastic tub in the refrigerator, beautiful and monkishly patient, waiting for their inheritor to decide what to do with them. Let's see ...