Limburger

Limburger is a semi-soft, smear-ripened cheese with a famously powerful smell. It is commonly known as Limburg, and in Belgium it is sold under the protected name Herve cheese. The style began in the Herve area of the old Duchy of Limburg, a hilly country between the Vesdre and Meuse rivers in what is now the Belgian province of Liege, and Herve has been made there since the 15th century. The Belgian cheese is a rind-washed soft cheese made from raw cow's milk and ripened for about three months in cellars of the Herve countryside, sometimes cut into the chalky rock. It has a pale yellow interior and a glossy reddish-brown surface formed by the bacteria that grow during ripening. The smell comes from Brevibacterium linens, a bacterium also found on human skin. The cheese is firm and crumbly when young and creamy and spicy when mature. It is often spread on rye bread with onion, a sandwich still popular in the American Midwest, where the style was first made in 1854.