Sunday Rerun: Always be honest. No one likes a cheddar!

 I see on the wonderful website Gastro Obscura  that there is cheese even stankier than Limburger or Beerkaese.  Beerkaese is described as "robust and pungent" in the way that you might describe Freddie Mercury as "flamboyant" and Terry Bradshaw as "goofy." The word beerkaese literally means beer cheese, and there is no beer in the cheese at all, but it got the name because it goes so well with beer, and the only problem is, when you go to schmear some on a cracker, you are made to think about the time you spent changing the foundation garmentry of a particularly incontinent toddler.

But the name Beerkaese doesn't tell you about how its aroma would send a buzzard running for cover. How about this stuff? Stinking Bishop cheese!

They say that it's an award-winning cheese, and they say it's the “smelliest cheese in Britain.” The article says it has a "subtle, nutty flavor," and also says it smells like a "rugby team's locker room," and that doesn't sound subtle at all, but a little bit nutty.

Cheese is funny stuff, no matter how you slice it. You wouldn't call a men's cologne "Rotten Feet," nor would you call a canned cherry pie filling "Putrid Pie Stuff," but the cheese manufacturers of the world seem to delight in slapping repulsive names on their goods. 

So it is with this Stinkin' cheese. The odor comes from soaking the ripening cheese in pear cider.  The cider was named for the pear that gets squeezed in its making.

The pear in question is called a Stinking Bishop pear because it was grown in Gloucestershire, England by a man who eschewed such niceties as taking a bath every now and then and not getting drunk every once in a while. The rank old man was Frederick Bishop (1847 - 1919) and his name was hung on the pears he raised.

Meanwhile, long after Freddy shuffled off to that meadow in the sky, a dairy farmer by the name of Charles Martell had some cows making milk to make cheese from, and he decided to do it the way monks made cheese in the 17th Century, and wash the cheese rinds in pear cider.

I know you think I'm making this up, but this happened in 1972.

And then it was years and years until 2005, when a movie called "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" was made, in which someone named Gromit waves Stinking Bishop cheese around to revive a friend.

This ain't exactly Kraft Cheddar or Land O' Lakes American we're talking about here. This is the malodorous product of the coagulated, compressed, and  ripened milk curd that has been separated from the whey.

It's the perfect sandwich cheese for those who are tired of having that new guy in the office ripping off your lunch every day. He'll never pilfer from you twice.