Fromage de Herve

What is Fromage de Herve Cheese?

Fromage de Herve comes from the Herve area of the historical Duchy of Limburg, whose capital was Limbourg-sur-Vesdre, now part of the French-speaking Belgian province of Liege. The Land of Herve is a hilly stretch between the Vesdre and Meuse rivers, close to the Dutch and German borders. Cheese has been made there since the 15th century.

The duchy lasted until the French Revolution as part of the Holy Roman Empire, and the style spread well beyond it. Herve is now the protected European name; the same cheese made elsewhere is sold as Limburger. Production in the United States began at the F.X. Baumert factory in Antwerp, New York, in 1854, and a version from pasteurized goat's milk followed in 1867. Only one American producer is left today, in Monroe, Wisconsin.

It is a washed-rind soft cheese made from raw cow's milk, sometimes flavored with herbs. Ripening runs about three months in cellars in the Herve countryside, several of them cut into the chalky rock. The bacteria that grow on the surface leave a glossy reddish-brown coating over a pale yellow interior. Most of it is sold shaped into a brick.

Texture and taste shift as the cheese ages. In the first month it is firm and crumbly, close to feta. Around six weeks the edges soften while the center stays firm, and it tastes salty and chalky. By two months it turns creamy and smooth, and at three months the smell arrives, the work of Brevibacterium linens, the same bacterium behind foot odor.

Once ripe the cheese is spreadable, which is how the Limburger sandwich works: a layer more than 0.5 cm (0.2 inch) thick on firm 100% rye bread with a thick slice of onion, served with strong black coffee or lager. Chunks up to 1.5 cm (0.6 inch) can be cut from the block instead. The sandwich stayed popular among descendants of Swiss and German immigrants in Wisconsin and Ohio, where restaurants serve it with brown mustard. Rinsing or removing the rind tones down the odor.