12 Of The Most Pungent Cheeses In The World

Stinky cheeses aren't just for putting in the desk drawers of your enemies or for brave tasting parties. We've rounded up a list of some of the most pungent (and sometimes downright offensive) yet still beloved cheeses in the world. Their smells and flavors range from stinky feet and manure to fungi, ammonia, and beyond. At least one is rumored to be banned on public transportation, another is banned for purchase in some places, and another has inspired poetry (as cheese should). 

Some people grow up eating them, while others are late to the potent cheese appreciation party. As such, they're all worthy of consideration when it comes to the next cheese you might want to try. Many of them have a bark that's stronger than their bite if you can get past the smell. While a large number come from Northern France, these strong cheeses come from other countries as well and boast various smelling and tasting notes that make them unique and interesting. So, if you're curious about the world of pungent cheeses, you're going to want to stick around to find out what some of the stinkiest ones smell and taste like.

The Guinness World Records considers Vieux Boulogne to be the smelliest cheese in existence. It's a soft cheese that comes from Boulogne-sur-Mer, a Northwestern coastal city in France. When Cranfield University measured the pungency level of Vieux Boulogne against various other cheeses, both humans and olfactory-measuring exercises agreed it came out on top. This cheese is made by washing its rind in beer, contributing to the potency level of the smell. The bacteria in the beer interact with the enzymes in the milk, creating an explosive smell that the nose can't ignore.

So what does Vieux Boulogne smell and taste like? There are many possible olfactory notes you might pick up when you remove the packaging from around this cheese. There's an earthiness to it, like stirring up a muddy forest floor littered with decaying leaves and fungi. You're likely to also detect dung, but some also find it to smell a bit like human body odor. However, the flavor of the cheese inside the rind is much more mellow and subdued, with hints of fungi. Peel off the rind, spread the soft cheese on fresh bread, down it with a beer, and you'll find yourself truly enjoying it (maybe).

While Vieux Boulogne is known for being the world's smelliest cheese, Époisses de Bourgogne has the reputation of being banned from eating on public transportation in Paris. Whether the ban is true or is just the stuff of urban legend, it's certainly not polite to whip out this pungent cheese in public.

Époisses de Bourgogne comes from Burgundy, France, and traces its history back to Cistercian monks who first made it in the 1500s in a village called Êpoisses. It's a soft, salt-brined, smear-ripened soft cheese made from unpasteurized milk. Every week, it gets several baths of water, Brevibacterium aurantiacum, and Marc de Bourgogne brandy (thus, its name). The wrinkly cheese smells like stinky feet walking through a wet forest; it's a result of the environment of the affinage caves it ages in and everything it soaks in

If you don't judge the cheese on smell alone, you'll find that it has a surprisingly delicate yet complex and lingering flavor profile with spicy, earthy, and salty notes under its odiferous rind. Some even get meaty bacon or nutty notes from it. To truly understand this soft and creamy cheese, you'll want to locate some Marc de Bourgogne brandy to try it with. If you lack the brandy, try pairing it with a dark ale.

Another stinky cheese that hails from Northern France is Maroilles, a type of Trappist cheese that has a long history. The story of this cheese begins in the year 962 in Maroilles, France, where area monks asked farmers to start making a special cheese for them on Saint John the Baptist's feast day (June 24) so it would be ready to eat on Saint Remi's feast day (October 1), when they planned to serve it to the harvesters of the Champagne grape in the region. Today, the aging process is strictly between five weeks and four months, and it's always shaped as a square. Cheesemakers wash the rind with Brevibacterium linens and saltwater as it ages. 

The smell of this creamy orange-rinded cheese is strong with a sulphuric aroma, along with rubbery, rotting fruit and wet cave notes. But the flavor is more mellow and complex, with some buttery, beefy, and even bright citrusy notes gracing your taste buds. Meanwhile, the rind is more earthy and mushroomy. The mellow flavor of this semi-soft cheese pairs well with the bitterness in coffee or chicory, which makes it great as a breakfast cheese on toast. It also works nicely with strong wines from Northern France.

With it also being known as "the devil's suppository," you can't imagine that boulette d'Avesnes is going to smell great. However, the names of this French cheese seem to come mainly from its cone shape and bright red exterior. This soft cheese dates back hundreds of years, when Benedictine monks wrote about the people of Avesnes who would hand-mold these cone-shaped cheeses in August. 

It was originally made from buttermilk, but these days, it tends to be made from dried leftover cheeses, like Maroilles. After being beer- and salt-washed several times a week and aged in a cellar for up to three months, it has plenty of stinky cheese power. Today's version has lots of herbs like tarragon and parsley, spices like cloves and pepper, and an exterior coating of paprika or annatto to enhance its flavor.

As you can imagine from the ingredients, this is a strong and spicy cheese, but it also has sour notes. If you're looking for something to drink with it, seek out strong beers like dark ales or robust red wine to complement its strong flavors.

Camembert de Normandie is one of the more well-known French cheeses that you need to try at least once. It comes from Normandy, France, and has been delighting palates for centuries. However, you will want to take note that the Camembert you find in the U.S. is far milder than the pungent original version from France.

Legend has it that Camembert dates back to 1791 when a priest taught cheesemaker Marie Harel how to make the cheese in exchange for her hiding him as a sympathizer in favor of the French Revolution. Today, some versions have as many as five layers — one layer is added every 50 minutes. It's aged two weeks before wrapping it, boxing it, and letting it sit for at least another three weeks to develop a Penicillium candidum mold exterior.

While the rind is abloom with soft and strong-smelling mold, the creamy inside redeems the experience. The smooth rind gives it an earthy, mushroomy flavor, and you might detect a woody note as well. Butter, milk, hazelnut, and a bitter note make up some of the other flavors you might experience.

Yet another strong French cheese from Northern France is Pont-l'Évêque, which has its origins in the Normandy region. While it definitely fits in the pungent category, the flavor is well-enjoyed. Pont-l'Évêque began its life as Angelot when it was first made by Cistercian monks in the 1100s. A few hundred years later, under its current name, the cheese managed to get a poem written in its honor. Today's version is sprayed with water and special enzymes before it settles down to ripen for 21 days.

You'll likely detect an earthiness from the edible mold layer on the top, which protects the semi-soft, creamy cheese underneath. The smell is strong and pungent, with the inside layer coming off as somewhat fecal to your nose. Despite the strong aged smell, it's not as likely to be off-putting compared to other strong cheese aromas. 

Ultimately, the mild flavor might remind you of Camembert since it's from the same region, but it's perhaps a bit more buttery and creamy. Because it's meant to be eaten with the rind, the flavor is fungal but also like hazelnuts and butter. Pair it with some tea or with apple or pear jelly, and you're going to enjoy it even more.

If you mention stinky cheeses, the one that most people in the U.S. can name is Limburger. While most Limburger cheese today is made in Germany, it had its start in the 1800s, with Trappist monks who made it in an area in Limburg near Liège, Belgium. If you've found some made in the U.S., that's because Swiss immigrants brought it to Wisconsin in 1867, where it became popular with German-speaking immigrants. Limburger is smear-ripened and is washed in a brine of a variety of alcohols (including beer and wine), which adds to its pungency.

When you take a whiff of this cheese, you're going to be thinking of things like sweaty, stinky feet, which is natural since the bacteria that gives the cheese its distinctive smell is also the bacteria responsible for stinky feet: Brevibacterium linens. Limburger tends to age in stages, becoming more pungent in your fridge by the month. However, the flavor is rather mild, considering what the smell makes you think you're going to experience. The trick to eating it is to combine it with items that have strong flavors and odors like rye bread, onions, horseradish, and mustard. The cheese also goes well with a strong, dark beer.

Munster d'Alsace is very different than the similarly-named Muenster cheese that cheese lovers in the U.S. can find in a typical grocery store. As you may have guessed from its name, Munster d'Alsace is from the Alsace region in France. Stories of this cheese go back as far as the seventh century. 

Because Benedictine monks produced this cheese, there's a theory that the name for the fromage may come from "monastère," the French word for monastery. Today, the cheese can only be made within a small area of France, and the unpasteurized milk has to come from Vosgiennes or Simmental cows. It also has to mature for two to three weeks while undergoing brine washes by hand.

The rock salt and water wash help to prevent mold on the Munster d'Alsace while encouraging the bacteria that make this cheese distinctive to grow. The resulting smell is a tenacious one that may remind you of a barnyard or fried eggs. Larger and longer-aged versions are more pungent. While the rind is bitter, the creamy inner cheese has a mild, buttery, earthy flavor with a sharp and tangy ending. Beer and wine from the Alsace region are common accompaniments.

With a name like stinking bishop, you can pretty much guess that this one is smelly. The cheese comes from Gloucestershire, England, and is considered Great Britain's smelliest cheese. If it sounds familiar but you haven't tried it, you likely heard it mentioned in the 2005 "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" movie.

Stinking bishop cheese has quite a backstory. It starts with a smelly, drunken 19th-century farmer named Frederick Bishop, whose pears came to be known as stinking bishop pears (he wasn't an actual bishop). In 1994, Charles Martell & Son launched its stinking bishop using pear perry (a type of alcoholic cider) to wash the cheese rinds. Like most alcohol-washed cheeses, it gave the cheese a distinctive, strong odor.

The smell is not unlike rotting chicken or a gym stench. If you can get past the aroma, you might find it delicious. Just be aware that the rind carries the same taste as the off-putting odor. So, avoiding the smell might be helpful to your enjoyment level. The cheese (sans rind) is creamy and rather mild. A pear or apple cider just may be the perfect pairing for the stinking bishop.

Now, we've come to the very controversial casu marzu, which is one of the few sheep's milk cheeses on the list. It's not a cheese that's easy to try because, while it's a protected traditional food of Sardinia, Italy considers it illegal to sell because it's made with maggots.

To make this delicacy that dates back to the Roman empire, you leave cheese outdoors with a small crack in it in hopes that cheese flies (Piophila casei) land on the cheese and lay eggs inside. As the larvae start to eat and digest the fats and proteins, they leave behind holes in the cheese, promote fermentation, and change the flavor. And, yes, you're supposed to eat the cheese while it's still writhing with live maggots.

Once you get past the fact that your food is alive and moving, you also have to get past the smell, which is like a strong blue cheese. The larvae's digestive enzymes also add ammonia to the mix. As the cheese and maggots age, there's a stronger smell of decay. If you're brave enough to try (and locate) this creamy and tangy cheese, you'll find that it tastes extremely strong. So be sure to chase it with a strong red wine.

Roquefort is one of the few sheep's milk cheeses on our list. While it is tested for safety, traditional Roquefort is not pasteurized and is aged in caves in Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, France. There's not a clear story about the origin of Roquefort cheese, but it dates back at least 1000 years. 

One Roquefort legend includes a man leaving his lunch of bread and milk behind in a cave while he goes off to chase a beautiful woman. When he returns hungry (months later!), the moldy has turned his milk into Roquefort cheese. In more verifiable history, it was possibly beloved by Pliny the Elder, and it was a favorite of emperor Charlemagne. Roquefort gets its dark marbling from a mold called Penicillium roqueforti, which comes from soil. The mold feeds on dough for around eight weeks before being added to raw milk to make the cheese. With 40 holes poked into each cheese loaf, it has plenty of air for the mold to grow.

In comparison to other blue cheeses, Roquefort is stronger in both flavor and smell with sharp earthy notes. However, there's also a smokiness to it, and some even detect dark chocolate or burnt caramel flavor notes. A sweet wine or cider can help bring out the flavors of this classic cheese.

Our final pungent cheese is Taleggio, a raw milk wash-rind cheese. It's a popular Italian cheese that dates back to the ninth century in Lombardy, possibly going as far back as the Roman times. Like several on our list, the pungency comes from Brevibacterium linens in the rind wash. It was originally only made from tired cows who had traveled from Alpine mountain pastures down to the plain below for the fall. Such cheese is called "stracchino" or "tired cheese." Then, the cheese was aged in the humid caves of the area. Today, you can still get "stracchino" or "all antica" cheese made the traditional way.

B. linens gives Taleggio the classic gym socks smell. However, it tastes fruity, mushroomy, meaty, sour, tangy, and salty. Meanwhile, the texture can be described as springy, doughy, marshmallowy, and gummy. It's great paired with a full-bodied and fruity red wine or an IPA beer.