Donkey Cheese: Serbia's Proper Fancy Oddity

By Warren Hamilton Category: Culinary Chaos 27th May 2026

Look, I've seen a lot of daft things billed as luxury food, but this one takes the biscuit. In a nature reserve in Serbia someone decided to press milk from donkeys into a cheese called Pule. It is real. It is made. People eat it. And it costs an eye-watering amount-roughly six thousand dollars a kilogram in the reports. Proper mental, innit?

Part of why it is so rare is not marketing or influencers. It is biology. Donkeys do not give heaps of milk. They lactate a bit, like they have a part-time job and go home early. So to make even a small lump of cheese you need milk from loads of jennies. That scarcity means the price goes up, simple as that.

They make Pule at the Zasavica reserve in Serbia, where they keep a herd of Balkan donkeys. Folks there milk the animals, and the milk is extremely tricky to turn into cheese. Donkey milk is low in fat and high in lactose compared with cow's milk, so standard cheesemaking does not want to play ball. The result is a tiny production run and a lot of baffled cheese-makers.

Now, the taste. People describe it as mild and slightly sweet, but listen-if I am honest, the idea of a wedge of donkey cheese is what sells it, more than the flavour. You pick it up like a museum piece. Someone offers you a sliver and you feel like you've been invited to a private club where the dress code is bafflement.

I tried a nibble years ago at a posh do a mate dragged me to. It was tiny. It came on a tiny spoon. I left with the feeling that I had paid in dignity rather than money. Still, I can see the point: it's rare, it's silly, and humans will pay for silly things because it makes them feel special.

So there you go. Donkey cheese exists. It is made with patience, a herd of patient donkeys and a lot of fuss. It is proper culinary chaos: nature doing its quiet thing and humans turning it into a status symbol. Odd world, eh?