Limburg

The cheese is named for a duchy split across three countries.

Historic Limburg is now divided between Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. The cheese is made well beyond it, but the name stuck to the smell.

The smell comes from a bacterium that also lives on human skin.

The cheese was first made in the Herve country of the old Duchy of Limburg, whose capital, Limbourg, now sits in the Belgian province of Liège. Most Limburger today is made in Germany and the United States rather than anywhere near Limburg. The odor comes from Brevibacterium linens, the same species that grows on human skin and accounts for the smell of feet.