because it is usually included among the
eighteen varieties on which the hundreds of others are based. It is
named from having been molded into its final shape by hand.
Universally popular with Germanic races, it is too strong for the
others. To our mind, Hand cheese never had anything that Allgaeuer or
Limburger hasn't improved upon.

It is the only cheese that is commonly melted into steins of beer and
drunk instead of eaten. It is usually studded with caraway seeds, the
most natural spice for curds.

Limburger

Limburger has always been popular in America, ever since it was
brought over by German-American immigrants; but England never took to
it. This is eloquently expressed in the following entry in the English
_Encyclopedia of Practical Cookery_:

Limburger cheese is chiefly famous for its pungently offensive
odor. It is made from skimmed milk, and allowed to partially
decompose before pressing. It is very little known in this
country, and might be less so with advantage to consumers.

But this is libel. Butter-soft and sapid, Limburger has brought
gustatory pleasure to millions of hardy gastronomes since it came to
light in the province of Luettich in Belgium. It has been Americanized
for almost a century and is by now one of the very few cheeses
successfully imitated here, chiefly in New York and Wisconsin.

Early Wisconsiners will never forget the Limburger Rebellion in Green
County, when the people rose in protest against the Limburger caravan
that was accustomed to park in the little town of Monroe where it was
marketed. They threatened to stage a modern Boston Tea Party and dump
the odoriferous bricks in the river, when five or six wagonloads were
left ripening in the sun in front of the town bank. The Limburger was
finally stored safely underground.

Livarot

Livarot has been described as decadent, "The very Verlaine of them
all," and Victor Meusy personifies it in a poem dedicated to all the
great French cheeses, of which we give a free translation:

In the dog days
In its overflowing dish
Livarot gesticulates
Or weeps like a child.

Muenster

At the diplomatic banquet
One must choose his piece.
All is politics,
A cheese and a flag.

You annoy the Russians
If you take Chester;
You irritate the Prussians
In choosing Muenster.

Victor Meusy

Like Limburger, this male cheese, often caraway-flavored, does not