North America · Volume 37, The Market, the Truck and the Tide
Crab Louis
Pacific Northwest and San Francisco, United States
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- Not statedNo source states a time and the atlas has too few comparable dishes to estimate one.
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Crab Louis
Standard, widely converged convention, not a single canonical named recipe
Ingredients
For the salad
- 450g (1lb) picked Dungeness crab meat
- 2 heads (about 450g) lettuce, shredded
- 2, quartered tomato, quartered
- 3, quartered eggs, hard-boiled
- a handful, blanched, if using asparagus, blanched (some versions)
For the Louis dressing
- 2 parts mayonnaise
- 1 part chili sauce or ketchup
- a dash Worcestershire sauce
- a squeeze lemon juice
- a small handful, finely chopped spring onion, finely chopped
Method
- Pile fresh picked Dungeness crab meat over a bed of shredded lettuce.
- Garnish with quartered tomato, hard-boiled egg and, in some versions, blanched asparagus.
- Make the Louis dressing: mayonnaise loosened with chili sauce or ketchup, a dash of Worcestershire, lemon juice and finely chopped spring onion, roughly two parts mayonnaise to one part chili sauce by volume.
Notes
The popular story that Enrico Caruso demanded the dish at Seattle's Olympic Club in 1904 is documented as false, since Caruso never performed in Seattle. Competing claims point to San Francisco's Poodle Dog restaurant in 1908, naming the dressing after chef Louis Coutard, and, credibly, to Portland's Bohemian restaurant, which James Beard himself believed originated it and which was advertising a "famous crab Louis" by the 1920s.
The earliest documented Northwest print appearance is a 1912 Portland community cookbook. This chapter follows Cascade PBS's own conclusion rather than adjudicating.
What a modern chef changes
Cured crab and a chinois-strained dressing
Ingredients
- spring onion, for dehydrating and grinding
- salt and citrus zest, for curing the crab
Method
- Cure the crab meat briefly with a light salt and citrus zest mixture before plating, the same technique used for the California roll.
- Pass the Louis dressing through a chinois for a completely smooth, glossy finish rather than the slightly grainy texture a hand-whisked version carries.
- Dehydrate and grind a portion of spring onion into a fine green seasoning dust, dusted over the finished plate alongside the fresh remainder for a sharper top note.