You might be wondering why the internet is buzzing about Olivia Wilde's salad dressing, and that's fair enough. The short answer is that Wilde, her boyfriend Harry Styles, and her ex-fiancé Jason Sudeikis (yes, the same actor who made Ted Lasso's biscuits famous) are caught in a controversy over alleged text messages that their former nanny leaked to The Daily Mail. One of the texts refers to "a special salad dressing" that Wilde makes, which meant that for 24 to 48 hours, the internet was full of sleuthing darlings who were trying to figure out what kind of incredible vinaigrette could fuel so much drama. Not since the Nicolas Cage favorite pasta shape mystery had so many people become instant food detectives.
A few folks narrowed in on a recipe that Wilde contributed to the Food Network in 2020, which features a very simple red wine vinaigrette. When I saw that dressing — red wine vinegar, mustard, olive oil, and shallot — I knew it looked familiar. It was suspiciously similar to my own back pocket vinaigrette that I learned from Nora Ephron's novel, "Heartburn." So when Wilde posted a photo from "Heartburn" that describes the dressing recipe on her Instagram Stories, I felt wildly vindicated.
