The foil triangle you spread on a cracker. Its name began as a joke in a First World War supply unit, and what is inside is made in a different way from most cheese.
The name came off the side of an army truck
A cartoonist named Benjamin Rabier served in a French supply unit during the First World War. He painted a laughing cow on the unit's trucks and lettered a word beside it: Wachkyrie — a swipe at Wagner's Valkyrie, then a pillar of German culture. Said aloud in French, the word sounds almost exactly like la vache qui rit, the laughing cow. The soldiers enjoyed it, and one of them was a young dairyman called Léon Bel.
After the war, the joke became a trademark
In 1921 Bel registered that name for a new cheese of his own, then asked the cartoonist who had painted the trucks for a fresh drawing. What arrived in 1924 is the red cow still on the box today. Look closely and she wears earrings shaped like cheese boxes — with the same cow printed on them. A trench joke has now outlived everyone who heard it.
But this is processed cheese
Here the paths divide. The triangle is not milk set into curd; it is cheese that already existed, melted together with milk solids and butter, and set again with a few salts. That is why milk is often not the first item in the ingredients, and why the food-type line reads processed cheese. This is not a criticism — it is a different product from natural cheese, and worth knowing as such.
Why it spreads instead of setting firm
The trick is in those salts. Emulsifying salts pull away the calcium that had been holding the proteins together; the freed protein then acts as an emulsifier itself, so fat and water stay mixed rather than splitting, and the whole thing sets smooth. It is precisely the principle behind adding sodium citrate to a cheese sauce — except here the result is cooled and sold as a solid.
Which is why it survives outside the fridge
Heat during processing, controlled moisture and acidity, and a sealed wrapper together let it sit at room temperature far longer than most cheese. That is what makes it a lunchbox and a suitcase cheese. Once opened, though, treat it like any other cheese: chilled, and eaten within a few days. Built to keep and fine once opened are two different claims.
Same company as the red wax ball
The curious part is that the triangle and the little waxed ball come from the same company — yet one is processed and the other is natural cheese made the edam way. They sit on the same shelf at a similar price and are made in opposite directions. Neither is better; it is only worth knowing which one you are holding.