Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 265, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 November 1912 — EEL-EATING CONTEST [ARTICLE]

EEL-EATING CONTEST

Linear Measurements, Not Pounds, Count at Finish. Winner, Five Feet Ten Inches In Height, Consumes Six Feet Ten Inches of Bmoking Fish—All the Waistlines Aliks. New York.—Pie eating matches are more or less familiar. Eel eating contests are much less so, for the simple reason that while commonly the pis eating is done in public and for a wager the eel eating is privately done and for fun, though the loser may be required to pay for all the eels eaten. There is a little club composed of half a dozen substantial men, ail lovers of sea food, that owns a comfortable bungalow In a pleasant spot on the Long Island shore, In which Its members meet occasionally to eat a sea food dinner. They do their own cooking and they are all good cooks* with one or another of them notably able In some specialty. One Is particularly good on chowder, others on fish and still others on eels. This club assembled ; ln the bungalow lately for an eel dinner and incidentally for an eel eating contest Among fishermen acquainted with) the eel in every aspect and among sell lovers generally he is considered as a qualified eel eater who can eat hi* own length in eels. But of course no man could eat his own length of big eels; the eels for such a test must not be more than half an inch in diameter, which is the standard slxs for eels to be eaten in eel eating contests. Snch is also the size eel that eel lovers find most agreeable to the taste. For this particular occasion theclub commissioned an eel fisherman to* gather eels in sufficient quantity .and: also those that should fill the. requirements, being not more than half an inch In diameter and of uniform size. It took the fisherman three days to do' this, though of course In that time he gathered also many larger eels which he could market. The eels for the club he selected by sifting his catch through a sieve with a half-inch mesh. The club’s cooking equipment includes two big frying pans 18 inches In diameter. Two members sat. down before the fire with these big frying pans and fried eels, which were kept hot in an over, and when the eels were all ready the club began to In pie eating and some other similar contests there is usually set a time limit, the winner being the man who e&ts the greatest number of plee in a given time; but there is optima limit here. The members eatjHHturely, for enjoyment, and then allhave finished the measurer mlßsures up the bones which each mas has preserved by himself At the table. One* lot after another each man’s eel bones are stretched out on the table., with the sections set end to end and snugly together, and then the measure of the string Is taken. On this occasion all the men hadi eaten more than their length of eels, with one exception. This member, who stands five feet ten inches in height, had eaten of eela but five feet nine. Probably he could easily have eaten a section or two more and. so have 1 exceeded the recognized standard limit U he had only taken, the trouble to keep a little closer mental note of his stacked op bones. But there were other members who had exceeded the standard by considerable, including one man of the same height as the loser, namely, five feet ten, who had eaten six. feet ten Inches of eels, or one foot more than bis own length. This probably constitutes the eel eating record.