Trial and Error: Olivia Wilde’s ‘secret’ salad dressing recipe

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably aware of the drama surrounding director Olivia Wilde’s split from Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis.

And over the past few days, the couple’s former nanny has made some shocking claims about how it all went down when Wilde left Sudeikis for the leading man in her new film Don’t Worry Darling - none other than Harry Styles himself.

The nanny claimed that Sudeikis found out about Wilde’s new romance on an old Apple Watch and that he once lay under her car so she couldn’t leave. All very shocking stuff - but the most dramatic revelation of all?

That when Wilde left, she made a salad for Styles with a special, secret dressing recipe and took it with her.

Since then, the internet has been dying to know exactly what is in that secret recipe.

Then last night, Olivia shared a snap to her Instagram story of a recipe from Nora Ephron’s book Heartburn (which, tellingly, is about divorce) revealing the secret ingredients.

🚨olivia wilde gave us her salad dressing recipe which is from nora ephron🚨 pic.twitter.com/LYxracNCC7

— ilana kaplan (@lanikaps) October 19, 2022

So we simply had to try making it.

The recipe calls for fairly simple ingredients: “Mix 2 tablespoons Grey Poupon mustard with 2 tablespoons good red wine vinegar. Then, whisking constantly with a fork, slowly add 6 tablespoons of olive oil, until the vinaigrette is thick and creamy; this makes a very strong vinaigrette that’s perfect for salad greens like arugula and watercress and endive.”

What on earth is Grey Poupon mustard, you may ask? Yeah, we couldn’t find it either, so we replaced it with the classic Dijon mustard. (Upon reflection, this may have been a mistake - you’ll see why).

We chose a simple bag of mesclun lettuce for our salad, mixed the dressing ingredients together, and unleashed the Olivia Wilde salad upon our unsuspecting colleagues.

Watch the video above to see what they thought.

The verdict:

Lifestyle & Entertainment editor Jenni said the dressing was “fine”. Front Page podcast host and secret foodie Damien said it was not worthy to sit alongside a steak. Our cameraman Cam declared it tasted like Big Mac Sauce. Not exactly glowing reviews.

But don’t take their word for it - here’s the recipe so you can try it for yourself.

Olivia Wilde’s secret salad dressing

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons Grey Poupon mustard - we used Dijon mustard but try this at your own risk

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

6 tablespoons olive oil

Salad greens of choice - we used mesclun lettuce

Mix the mustard and red wine vinegar together. Then, whisking constantly with a fork, slowly add the olive oil until the vinaigrette is thick and creamy. Drizzle over your salad greens and toss until combined. Serve.