Hable Creme Chantilly

The name Hable Creme Chantilly sounds French, but the cheese is Swedish and actually lives up to the blurb in the imported package:  “The overall characteristic is indescribable and delightful freshness.”

This exclusive product of the Walk Gaerd Creamery was hailed by Sheila Hibben in The New Yorker of May 6, 1950, as enthusiastically as Brillat-Savarin would have greeted a new dish, or the Planetarium a new star: 

Endeavoring to be as restrained as I can, I shall merely suggest that the arrival of Creme Chantilly is a historic event and that in reporting on it I feel something of the responsibility that the contemporaries of Madame Harel, the famous cheese-making lady of Normandy, must have felt when they were passing judgment on the first Camembert.

Miss Hibben goes on to say that only a fromage a la creme made in Quebec had come anywhere near her impression of the new Swedish triumph.  She quotes the last word from the makers themselves:  “This is a very special product that has never been made on this earth before,” and speaks of “the elusive flavor of mushrooms” before summing up, “the exquisitely textured curd and the unexpectedly fresh flavor combine to make it one of the most subtly enjoyable foods that have come my way in a long time.”

And so say we—­all of us.

Hand Cheese

Hand cheese has this niche in our Cheese Hall of Fame not because we consider it great, but 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.