Crab Louie — United States

Crab Louie, also spelled Crab Louis, is a cold American salad centred on crab meat, arranged over shredded lettuce and finished with a rich, tomato-tinted dressing. It sits among the composed seafood salads of the West Coast, where fresh crab has long been abundant, and it is typically served as a light lunch or starter rather than a main course built for a crowd. Sources trace the dish to the early twentieth century and to the West Coast of the United States, with Seattle and San Francisco both credited in various accounts as places where it was served in hotels and clubs of the period. The salad's exact origin is debated, and several restaurants of that era claimed to have popularised it, so no single account is treated here as settled. To prepare it, lump crab meat is kept in large pieces and chilled, then set over a bed of shredded lettuce along with wedges of tomato, hard-boiled egg and avocado. The dressing combines mayonnaise, chilli sauce or ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice and a little cream, sometimes with chopped chives or green pepper, giving the salad its characteristic pink hue. The components are plated rather than tossed, so the crab remains visible and intact. This version keeps to the classic West Coast composition of crab, lettuce, egg and a pink dressing, though the exact vegetables, herbs and proportions of sauce vary from one kitchen to another, since the dish has always been assembled to the cook's taste rather than to one fixed formula.