Vieux Boulogne: discover world’s stinkiest cheese!

The world is full of delicious stinky cheeses like Limburger, Munster, Epoisses de Bourgogne, or Brie de Meaux, but, according to a team of researchers from Cranfield University, north of London, France’s Vieux Boulogne is the stinkiest of them all!
Two decades ago, scientists at Cranfield University tested 15 of the world’s stinkiest cheeses to determine which of them had the worst smell, using human sniffers as well as a computer-linked “electronic nose” to rank the odor of the cheeses, determining that Vieux Boulogne was by far the stinkiest.

Also known as Sablé du Boulonnais, it is an unpasteurized, unpressed artisanal cheese made from cow’s milk, developed in 1982 by Antoine Bernard and Philippe Olivier.
The square-shaped-delicacy quickly became famous for its pungent aroma described by Cranfield University academics as a “mix of body odor and cow dung”.
More precisely, it stinks so bad that it is banned from being eaten on public transport in France!
However, and surprisingly, Vieux Boulogne cheese has a smooth, mellow taste that doesn’t match its smell at all.
And that’s because it’s not the cheese itself that causes people to turn up their noses, but the orange rind around it: during the two months it spends maturing in cellars around the town of Boulogne-sur-Mer, in northern France, cheeses are washed with beer, which gives them their signature orange look and aroma. Apparently, the interaction between bacteria in the beer and the cow’s milk enzymes creates this pungent smell that Vieux Boulogne is popular for and, beneath its stinky rind, lies a smooth and creamy cheese that is often enjoyed with a spoon.

After their 2004 cheese smell test, scientists at Cranfield University performed a second test in 2007, using a more advanced electronic nose.
The result? Vieux Boulogne retained its title and hasn’t given it up since!

Images from web – Google research