The world’s most complicated—and seemingly endless—celebrity scandal has come down to salad dressing. And now, we must ask: What salad would make its perfect partner-in-lust?
If you have thus far missed it (how we envy you), the protracted three-way Drama Triangle occupied by Don’t Worry Darling director Olivia Wilde, ex-fiancé Jason Sudeikis, and Harry Styles—Wilde’s pop superstar boyfriend—grew even more fraught when the Daily Mail published a bombshell interview with Sudeikis and Wilde’s ex nanny: Sudeikis, the nanny said, was driven mad with jealousy and grief when he realized that Wilde had prepared “special salad dressing” for her new lover.
“The night she left with her salad, Jason had chased after her, videotaping her in the house,” the nanny told the Mail. “Jason went outside and lay under her car so she wouldn’t leave. She got in her car to back up, he lay under her car so she wouldn’t leave.
ADVERTISEMENT
Naturally, these details sparked fervent speculation as to which ingredients make up this extra-special, Styles-luring concoction. Plus, when picturing a meal that one might whip up to seduce someone, a salad isn’t the first dish that springs to mind. Does a recipe for a sexy salad exist?
Although Sudeikis and Wilde denounced the nanny’s claims, on Tuesday night, Wilde posted a page of the Nora Ephron book Heartburn on her Instagram story that includes a vinaigrette recipe: “Mix 2 tablespoons Grey Poupon mustard with 2 tablespoons good red wine vinegar. Then, whisking constantly with a fork, slowly add 6 tablespoons olive oil, until the vinaigrette is thick and creamy; this makes a very strong vinaigrette that’s perfect for salad greens like arugola [sic] and watercress and endive.”
“As someone who eats salads every night and tries to dress up salads all the time, that dressing is kind of boring,” Seth Karm, the CEO of Salad Savoy Corporation, told The Daily Beast. “I’d personally use spinach and violet and white kale, that way you get some good color in there. And I’d definitely want to have a little bit of a crunch aspect, either with toasted almonds, pumpkin seeds or shredded carrots. The more color the better.”
“The dressing you mentioned is very similar to a dressing we use for the Insalata Rosa at Orso,” Victor Flores, executive chef at Joe Allen and Orso restaurants in NYC, told The Daily Beast. Flores thinks Wilde’s recipe would pair well with the Rosa, which “consists of frisbee, red endive, asparagus, shallot vinaigrette, almonds and romano cheese. It looks really good on the plate. The red endive we arrange around the plate, the frisbee and asparagus go in the middle and the almonds and romano cheese go on top.”
“That dressing would be good with a grilled vegan chicken salad with pickled onions, olives, feta cheese and grape leaves,” Yas Alani, the owner of Vegan On The Fly in Manhattan, told The Daily Beast. “That should compliment the vinaigrette really well.”
“I think it would go great with our avocado citrus salad,” Jonathan Flores, head chef at Salt’s Cure in LA, told The Daily Beast. “The dressing is nice and velvety and creamy, and it shouldn’t be too runny, so it can coat the entire salad. You don’t want the dressing to get to the bottom of the salad, you want it to stay on the greens.”
TikTokers like MasterChef Australia contestant Khanh Ong and The Salad Lab also capitalized on the viral vegetable medley by sharing their own takes on the dressing recipe.
The Salad Lab’s “Olivia Wilde style salad with the notorious vinaigrette” pairs the Heartburn dressing with a simple combination of arugula, watercress and endive.
On his TikTok channel, Ong put his own unique spin on the Wilde dressing. His dressing recipe requires combining the zest of one orange, 1/4 cup orange juice, 1/4 cup red wine vinegar, 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, 2 teaspoons of orange marmalade and three teaspoons of miso paste. For Ong’s chosen salad, you’ll need arugula, segmented oranges, fennel, walnuts and soft goat cheese.
At first glance, whipping up a salad for your pop star love interest seems like a dorky thing to do, but considering the how health-obsessed celebrities are, maybe it’s fitting.
When coming up with his salad recipe idea, Ong wanted the dish to reflect “the vibe of being an actor. The salad is clean, and very LA. I played on the British thing [Styles is British] with the marmalade, and I added the miso because I thought [Wilde] is the type of person that would have an edge, or something different.”
Even though a salad may have been a source of heartbreak and sheer misery for Sudeikis, curious home cooks testing the viral recipe for themselves this week will have eaten a few more greens, and that can only be a net positive.
However, not all restauranteurs were crazy about Wilde’s dressing recipe. “That does not sound like my kind of salad dressing, to be honest,” Jen Agg, a Toronto-based restauranteur and author, told The Daily Beast. “I like it a little bit smoother, and that’s way too much mustard.”
If seeking a vegetal means of seduction, “crudités can work,” Agg suggests, with “soft cheese, romaine or endive dip.” If the plan is to share crudités between the sheets, Agg says to use “soft cheese ONLY to avoid hard cheese crumbs in the bed. Otherwise, hard cheese is king. Soft cheese, hard dick!”
And while one might associate rich foods with romance, Agg has a counterargument: “I mean, you have to eat light to fuck.”
