"Like water for chocolate", the De La Garza family has a sensual connection toward food. Each chapter which is in months begin with recipes. These recipes are for the events the family may have or for medicine and other basic needs. Tita, the third daughter of Mama Elena is very familiar with these recipes and the kitchen. She and her sister Gertrudis are pros in the kitchen and also carry their heritage's recipes within them unlike their other sister Rosaura; who has no skill in cooking.
Other than the cooking, love arises in every person of the family. But the love that the women would have was forbidden love. Each women would have a love that their family members would frown on . Like Tita's love for Pedro; it was strong and young. But her mother didn't want this love to happen. She said that Tita would be by her side until she dies and with that, Tita wouldn't be able to get married or become pregnant. As if it couldn't get any worse, Mama Elena made Pedro married her sister Rosaura. It hurts to see the person you love go away far with someone else and that what Rosaura and Pedro did. Mama Elena had a sense that Tita and Pedro was getting to close and move him and his wife to live with another family.
This wasn't the only forbidden love in the family. Just like food, there was a secret ingredients of love with the women. One secret was with Gertrudis, whom ran away with a strange man that eventually she got married to. Even Mama Elena had a forbidden love before her children was born. To see Mama Elena with a love of a man instead of Tita's father, was outragous because her attitude is bitter and cold and to see that the love of her life was ripe out of her life, she was just protecting her daughter from life.
As love and food grow through the soul of the family, a revolution was going on outside the ranch and the village. Desruption also travel to the family and caused a spreration between Tita and Elena. As problems arosed from left to right, the soul and pleasure for food dies out. The relationship with food could either bring the family close or seprate them, but why? Why is food the core of the family achievements our disappointments?