Set in Mexico
Tita (Lumi Cavazos) and Rosaura (Yareli Arizmendi) live with their mother, Mamá Elena (Regina Torné). The mother has decided that Tita must stay single to take care of her when she becomes an old woman. Tita accepts her fate, although she's in love with Pedro (Marco Leonardi). Pedro and his father try to convince Elena, but she refuses. Pedro asks Elena permission to marry Rosaura instead. That way, he intends to live as close to Tita as possible. Moreover, Tita is the main cook which prepares all the menu to be eaten at their wedding. When she is preparing the wedding cake, she cries in silence; when the guests eat that cake, they all feel nostalgic about their past lives. That way, Tita discovers that she can do a certain kind of magic with the dishes she prepares, and each one will be a love song for Pedro from that moment on.
Tita is kept as a servant in Elena's house, where Pedro and Rosaura stay to live after the honeymoon. Rosaura and Tita don't get on too well, but Rosaura is happy because she'll be the master of the hacienda as soon as Elena dies.
Soon, Tita meets American doctor John Brown (Mario Iván Martínez), who asks her to go out. He's very patient, although he knows that Tita is in love with another man.
There is a discovery that the father of Elena's children was black, because one of the grandchildren born of runaway Chencha (Pilar Aranda) is black, although nor her neither her desperado husband are so. At that moment, Mamá Elena is already dead, and with the discovery of that secret, her ghost is conjured, and Tita feels she may have the opportunity of being happy.
Tita finally marries John, so Rosaura doesn't feel jealous anymore. When Rosaura gives birth to her first child, she's happy because it's a girl. Rosaura intends to force that girl to stay single and take care of her as Tita is doing. Tita opposes angrily, so there's a continuous fight among the two women because of that. However, Rosaura will die, leaving her daughter free to do as she pleases when she becomes older.
Time goes on. Tita feels that she can't betray John, because he's always been good and patient to her.
When Tita and Pedro can be together eventually, they have sex in a romantic atmosphere: at night, in a room full of silk-white linen and hundreds of burning candles. An voice-in-off tells the audience that everything burnt down, and that they died there, because the love of their passion was so strong that, released all at once, it consummed both of them.
