Based on my admittedly limited knowledge of her, actress Florence Pugh seems like a particularly delightful celebrity. She forms deep attachments to her cacti. She frequently posts endearing photos with her older brother, who happens to be hot. And she apparently loves to cook, which she recently documented in a soothing step-by-step Instagram Story of herself preparing orange marmalade.
“My gran makes the best marmalade in the world, so I’m hoping to do her proud,” the 24-year-old actress said in the series of videos she uploaded on Sunday night, filmed in the style of a Bon Appétit video cooking tutorial — albeit, an amateur one without the fancy overhead lighting. Though Pugh is upfront about the fact that she’s not a master chef (“I’ve never done this before, but I have eaten a lot of marmalade,” she says partway through the video), she clearly has some kitchen skills. She’s resourceful, crafting a DIY muslin bag out of a tea towel to strain the orange pulp. She also enlightens viewers about the meaning of a “rolling boil” (a vigorous boil, with lots of bubbles) and a “flake test” (when you check a marmalade’s doneness by seeing if the slightly cooled liquid features flakes, and isn’t just syrupy).
This isn’t her first cooking video — that would be her peanut butter ice cream journey, which she shared on her Instagram Stories last month. “No one told me that it’s really fucking complicated to make,” Pugh says of ice cream, before realizing that she had picked an intricate Michelin-star recipe. While Pugh apologizes for the vulgarity, it’s her self-deprecation and bemusement that make her cooking videos so charming, and relatable.
I invite you to turn off your brain and relax as Pugh thinly slices a tender, almost glowing Seville orange, and listen as she says “marmalade” in her native English accent. Now we just need her to make 100 more of these.
