But as the clock ticked down to zero, the U.S. team was scrambling to deal with a slight glitch: the field kitchen was throwing off so much steam that water had begun to condense on the inside of the tent and rain back down on the food. “Can we get something plastic?” shouted Army Sergeant Matthew Flemister. “It’s dripping right on our plates!” Toward the back of the tent, Army Specialist Valine Vukich, a petite, tattooed former sous-chef from Chicago, was busy wiping spoiled chocolate motifs off pristine Villeroy & Boch china and reapplying them with a pastry bag, all the while darting watchful glances at a chocolate mousse in danger of congealing.

This year’s team was selected through an Army-sponsored competition that any active-duty military chef can enter. Held annually in Fort Lee, Virginia, it’s the largest military culinary competition in America. The Army sees it, and the team it produces, as a morale boost for soldiers, whose meals benefit from the skills the Army’s chefs pick up in training. The Culinary Arts Team is also a draw for potential recruits: enlisted chefs can use their Army training to find jobs as everything from gourmet chefs and caterers to ice sculptors when they muster out. Sending the team to civilian competitions in the U.S. and abroad is also a PR effort, targeted with a sniper’s accuracy: the Culinary Olympics attracts some of the restaurant world’s top civilian talent. “It’s important to show all these other chefs that military chefs can really shake and bake,” said Army Chief Warrant Officer4 Robert Sparks, the team’s manager and a veteran of four previous Culinary Olympics.

This year at Erfurt, the Americans came in second to the Swiss, outscoring eight other countries. (The Hungarians came in sixth.) For some team members, the outcome represented a vindication of sorts. “I’m trying to beat the stereotype of can-to-pan cooking,” said Petty Officer Second Class Edward Fuchs, who usually cooks for 50 sailors on a Coast Guard cutter based in Cheboygan, Michigan, as he watched his teammates garnish their appetizers with whale-tail-shaped crackers. “We’re all issued more than a can opener and a box cutter.”

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