Set in the early years of the 20th century, the protagonists of this story is a writer called Augusto, and a rather special cook. Augusto once wrote a best selling cookbook but is suffering from a bad attack of writer's block. He keeps asking his publishing house for advances and his friends for loans. He meets Antonia, who works as a cook for a countess. Antonio and the countess live with the noblewoman's daughter, a bland creature who's in love with a lieutenant with literary aspirations, and a half-mad sex-addict son who molests all the females of the house.

When the countess dies, Augusto hires Antonia. But she turns out to be much more than he expected. Antonia keeps what everyone believes to be a recipe book, in fact it's a sort of scandalous diary of everyone's secrets...