Elizabeth Zott is a woman with the unmistakable presence of someone who is not average and never will be. But it is 1961, and women wear shirt dresses and join garden clubs. No one believes they can become chemists, except for Calvin Evans, the lonely, brilliant Nobel Prize candidate who falls in love with Elizabeth's mind. However, even in 1961, life takes its own course. Thus, a single mother, Elizabeth Zott, soon finds herself on the TV show "Dinner at Six." For her, cooking is chemistry, and chemistry means changing states.