An English chef, encouraged by his ambitious wife to recreate the cuisine of the great French masters, diligently does so for years, until their London restaurant becomes famous. When, inexplicably, the wife persuades her husband to invent his own recipes, the chef panics, has a breakdown, and is overtaken by surreal fantasy. In Taylor's tale of a personal crisis she subtly and skillfully intermingles the language of food and love with sometimes macabre effect.