Notable Sandwiches #107: Limburger

Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, alongside my noble editor David Swanson, trudge our way through the moors of Wikipedia’s List of Notable Sandwiches, in alphabetical order. This week, a pungent punchline: limburger.

In order to attempt the Limburger sandwich, I had to get drunk first.

I picked up two blocks of Limburger from venerable German metzgerei Schaller and Weber in Manhattan. The cheese is named after the Limburg province of Belgium, but has been enthusiastically embraced by their German neighbors.

Then, my boyfriend and I had a casual dinner at Heidelberg Restaurant next door, which consisted, on my part, of a bowl of leberknödel soup and an entire liter of Oktoberfest amber beer, served in a boot-shaped chalice.

I got home somewhat tipsy, with a bag that was cold, full of blutwurst, and smelled like feet.

I leaned close to the bag. I picked up the block of limburger, which I had bought alongside German rye, sharp mustard, red onion, and various sausages for my own consumption. The cheese still smelled like my own feet. On a hot day. Without socks. It’s… grim.

So I decided to get even drunker while watching the DNC, and, at the crucial pre-blackout tipping point, put this into my mouth.

If you want a full and complex and very well-researched history of the cheese in question I strongly encourage you to check out Ben Schwartz’s incredible essay, “The Cheese That Stands Alone.” Among other things, limburger stood as a symbol of the uneasy acceptance of Irish, German, Central and Eastern European, and Jewish immigrants in the early twentieth century, and colorful immigrant malapropisms were labeled “Limburger English.”

I want to like this cheese.

I want to very much.

I just need a little liquid courage first.

Or maybe a fair bit.

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As I drink my courage, I’m listening to people once again failing to appreciate the anti-war message of “Born in the USA” while dancing at the DNC.

I drink more as speakers ramble on about the border and law enforcement and our big beautiful murderous military. Not very demure of them so invite so many cops and Republicans to this convention and not a single Palestinian speaker. I disapprove.

These people suck, and I’m drunk. The limburger is leering at me from the fridge. It’s not just a stinky punchline from ‘90s cartoons and old vaudeville routines, it’s something I paid money for and must consume.

Is this what suffering for your art is like?

Kamala gives her speech. It’s… fine? I don’t know. I’ve lost much of my ability to predict or hope anything much over the last eight years. She did fine! I hope Trump doesn’t win again, that will be a goddamn femicidal nightmare. All of American politics is an increasingly gruesome chimera.

The balloons drop, and so does my increasingly alcohol-distressed stomach.

The pageantry and jingoism are over. Time to face reality. On dark rye.

I approach the cheese, which was made in Bavaria. Even refrigerated, it is odorous. Malodorous.

An Australian follower of mine on Bluesky sent me a newspaper article from 1890. “My great-great-grandfather was hauled before a magistrate in colonial Australia for importing it. Unfit for human consumption according to a customer. The magistrate disagreed having tried the cheese but mentioned in his judgment that his wife wouldn't allow it in the house,” Lucien Ey said, backed up by the account in the South Australian Register. (A tin of Limburger was in the courtroom, but “no-one ventured to open it, and the threatened exodus of the audience was averted.”) 

I open the cheese block.

The smell is… staggering.

I’m truly not a picky eater. This is genuinely disturbing. 

On dark rye, it’s not so bad to eat. I mean, it’s pungent, but if my nose was cut off, it would just kind of taste like regular cheese. 

It isn’t and it doesn’t, though.

I make it through two sandwich-bites and a big hunk of limburger on its own. Rye bread blunts the assault considerably.

The overall impression is “what if socks you’ve worn all day in the heat were somehow creamy?”

I have eaten gizzards, livers, kidneys, hearts, and some very funky pickles in my time, and this punchline of a cheese has defeated me. I would advocate firebombing Limburg, Belgium, but a) Belgium has been firebombed too many times and b) its namesake cheese has long since escaped containment.

It feels like something just died in my mouth. My hands smell terrible.

I’m drunk and even though I’m home, I feel betrayed and want to go home. I’m genuinely upset. 

I have suffered for my art, and it is inglorious.

I drink three liters of water and go back to bed. I hate this sandwich. This cheese deserves to stand alone, in a penitent corner. 

I finished the slice of rye, though.