Tita begins producing breast milk and is able to nurse Roberto. Rosaura is unable to nurse Roberto while recovering from pregnancy complications ( eclampsia), so Tita brings a hungry Roberto to her breast to stop him from crying since he won't drink tea or cow's milk. Later, Rosaura becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son, Roberto, which Tita delivers on her own. On the day of the wedding, Tita finds Nacha lying dead on her bed, holding a picture of her fiancé. Suspecting that Tita put an emetic into the wedding cake, Mama Elena violently beats Tita. At the wedding reception, everyone except for Tita gets violently sick after eating the wedding cake, vomiting everywhere. While preparing the wedding cake, Tita is overcome with sadness, and cries into the cake batter. Mama Elena forces Tita to help Nacha prepare the meal for Rosaura's wedding reception.

Her love for cooking also comes from the fact that she was born in the kitchen. Tita has a deep connection with food and cooking thanks to Nacha, who was Tita's primary caretaker growing up. In order to stay close to Tita, Pedro decides to follow this advice. She suggests that Pedro marry Tita's eldest sister, Rosaura, instead. Unfortunately, she forbids it, citing the de la Garza family tradition that the youngest daughter (in this case, Tita) must remain single and take care of her mother until she (Mama Elena) dies. The feeling turns out to be mutual, so Pedro asks Mama Elena for Tita’s hand in marriage. Pedro Muzquiz is their neighbor, with whom Tita falls in love at first sight at a family Christmas party.

She lives on a ranch near the Mexico-United States border with her domineering mother, Mama Elena, her older sisters Gertrudis and Rosaura Nacha, the ranch cook and Chencha, the ranch maid.

Tita de la Garza, the protagonist, is 15 years old at the beginning of the novel. Like Water for Chocolate is divided into 12 chapters, one for each month of the year, and each chapter comes with a Mexican recipe that correlates to a specific event in the protagonist's life. The novel won the American Booksellers Book of the Year Award for Adult Trade in 1994. Tita is only able to express herself when she cooks.Įsquivel employs magical realism to combine the supernatural with the ordinary throughout the novel. The novel follows the story of a young woman named Tita, who longs for her beloved, Pedro, but can never have him because of her mother's upholding of the family tradition: the youngest daughter cannot marry, but instead must take care of her mother until she dies. The English version of the novel was published in 1992. It was first published in Mexico in 1989. Like Water for Chocolate ( Spanish: Como agua para chocolate) is a novel by Mexican novelist and screenwriter Laura Esquivel.

Like water for chocolate spanish book