Potkäse — The Killer Cheese

Potkäse, or pot-cheese, as the German name implies, originates in the distant past from Germany or Holland. As far as I know, it has maritime origins and was consumed where only males were present, such as on sailing ships. It is the cheese of all cheeses. For cheese lovers, but not all, it has a magnificent full-bodied flavour, a delight for the palate. Its smell, however, is, for non-cheese lovers, a frightening, repulsive, and putrid odour, prompting an instant premortal fleeing behaviour. For cheese lovers, its odour is like the fragrance of a beautiful woman, the initiation of a deep love affair, because when whiffing the initial odour away, complex layers of smell and taste emerge combined with that of its supplement, dark rye bread, leading to a near spiritual experience. There are those who take irrational exception to potkäse, particularly indoors. Interference with a potkäse (such as hiding it in a nearby forest or digging it down in the garden) is customarily considered valid grounds for divorce.

My first experience with potkäse was at a young age. My father, who had joined the navy at the age of sixteen, had invited the neighbours for our traditional Danish family Christmas lunch. During the prior two weeks, he had carefully prepared a potkäse, tending to it day after day until it reached its maturity on Christmas Day. The males of our neighbours were all sailors, and their wives used to navy rituals.

The first course of the lunch was rye bread with pickled herrings and raw onion rings on top, accompanied by traditional Christmas beer and Danish snaps. The second course was more rye bread with warm pork roast, warm Danish meatballs, various salami and pickles. Christmas beer was replaced with pilsners of lesser strength, but the snaps remained. Then there was a pause, where cheers and salutes were common practice as an opportunity to raise the glass.

There was an air of expectation about what was to come. My mother came from the kitchen and placed on the table a large dish with various cheeses, French Camembert, Roquefort (French blue cheese), and the 45% Danbo cheese, a local favourite. If the potkäse was not available, the dish would have a piece of “Old Ole”, a 45% Danbo matured to full strength. She also brought a basket full of various biscuits, including the dark German Pumpernickel.

The tasting began after a fresh round of snaps was poured, justified as “one for the cheese”. Then a pause. My father rose from his chair and, on unsteady feet, disappeared into the kitchen shortly after emerging with a small, blue-glazed clay pot. Ahead of him was a malodorous odour.

With applause, the pot was ceremoniously placed on a handmade trivet made of tarred rope stitched together with sailmaker’s twine. My father carefully removed the sailcloth covering the pot opening by untying the tarred twine that kept it in place.

My aunt, a stout woman in her late sixties, a city dweller, excused herself from the table and went outside. My mother looked nervously through the window, ensuring herself that Aunt Sophie was all right. After a while, she got up to look for her outside. She swiftly returned, asking my father to call an ambulance. Aunt Sophie had collapsed and lay on the ground. When the ambulance arrived, she had regained consciousness, but refused to be carried into the house. With her handkerchief over her nose and mouth, she was carried on a stretcher through the house to the waiting ambulance. At that moment, the undertaker, who had his business down the main street not far away, arrived asking about our well-being. He joined us at the table.

The creamy cheese from the pot was consumed on top of biscuits, particularly on the dark pumpernickel. One of our guests, David, a naval officer and cook, had prepared a popular sweet mustard which, to everybody’s delight, could be smothered on top of the cheese.

In the navy, the making of potkäse follows a strict ritual. At sea, the cook asks the captain to release from the store a bottle of Danish snaps. The captain formally agrees, signs the form, and asks the cook to swear on the bible that the snaps is for potkäse only and not for human consumption. Everybody knew, including the cook, that if anybody made free with even a limited volume of snaps, the flavour of the potkäse would suffer.

The cook would meticulously collect all pieces of cheese left on trays and plates, including those bits that had dried out in the galley pantry, to be cut into small pieces, crumbled, and put into a large, glazed clay pot. Snaps was added and mixed with the cheese. It was a daily exercise, which lasted two weeks. The pot was secured with its sailcloth cover in the galley pantry. The sailcloth prevented oxygen from interacting with the moulding of the cheese, but not entirely.

After two weeks, it was time. The first to know were the sailors who were recovering the topgallant before an approaching storm. A young, inexperienced midshipman suggested to the officers on the quarterdeck that, in his opinion, there were still dead rats in the bilge despite it being cleaned before departure. That suggestion landed him an uncomfortable task way below.

Rye bread slices with potkäse were on a tray presented ceremoniously to the captain and the officers on the quarterdeck, who were to approve the cook’s efforts. Then, trays with rye bread slices covered with potkäse were set on the tables in the crew’s mess next to the scullery, monitored by the quartermaster ensuring a just distribution.

When all was consumed, the cook again asked the captain to release a bottle of snaps for the next potkäse. No food was wasted on any ship!

Potkäse was commonly bartered for rum between ships in the cross-Atlantic trade because homebound ships had run out of cheese and snaps. The practice of developing potkäse was popular in the Danish sugar trade. For years, merchant ships left Copenhagen with a cargo of arms and snaps to be traded for slaves at a Danish fort, Danfort, on the west African Guinean coast bound for the sugar plantations on the Danish Virgin Islands. It was said, lookouts and guards at the fort knew when a vessel with potkäse was approaching upwind.