Crab Louis salad, made with Louis dressing, is a classic dish originating from the Pacific waters of the US. Its inventor is disputed, with claims from San Francisco and Spokane. Louis dressing is similar to Thousand Island dressing, with variations including chiles or diced onions.
Louis dressing closely follows the basic recipe for Thousand Island dressing. It’s a creamy, creamy concoction made from four parts mayonnaise, one part ketchup, with some sweet flavor and salt. What makes it unique are the ingredients it’s on: an age-old classic called Crab Louis, whose origins are murkier than its appeal.
Louis Crab dressing is poured over a bed of iceberg lettuce, slices or wedges of common salad like hard-boiled egg, cucumber, onion, cooked asparagus, tomato and avocado, and the star: a flavorful pile of Dungeness crab meat. This species is found in the Pacific waters of the United States, explaining how the range of restaurants claiming to be its original creator extends along the American west coast.
Lewellyn “Louis” Davenport, the owner of the Davenport Inn in Spokane, Washington, claimed to be the inventor of Crab Louis dressing and salad. He put it on his menu in 1914, where it remained a supposedly original item into 2011. Davenport came to Spokane, however, from San Francisco, where, four years earlier, Solari’s restaurant touted the recipe as its own, named after the king’s prodigious appetite. of England Louis XIV. Six years earlier, in 1904, famed tenor Enrico Caruso is believed to have popularized the dish during visits to the Olympic Club in Seattle, Washington.
Around this time, on the East Coast of the United States, Thousand Island Dressing was invented by a family of fishing guides who included the dressing in a round of shore meals. The dressing caught the attention of cookbook author and actress May Irwin, who named the creamy concoction based on the Thousand Islands region around Clayton, New York. The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City took notice, and the recipe quickly became a national favorite.
It wasn’t until the 1950s that the Louis dressing became a household name, however. This may have been due to the efforts of San Francisco’s famed Palace Hotel, where fishing for Dungeness crab had become a regional obsession.
Dozens of variations of Louis seasoning have been attempted over the decades, including adding chiles or diced onions to spice up the flavor profile. Some chefs add chopped black olives or boiled eggs to add texture and substance, removing the egg and onion slices from the salad to compensate. Other chefs increase the amount of ketchup and like to add a spicier flavor. These dishes might have two parts mayonnaise, one part ketchup, and one part relish, with salt to taste.
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