Speaking to Judy Stein over Zoom in her airy Maine kitchen, it’s unmistakable that she is a dedicated cook. Copper pans hang in front of a wall of windows, shelves are stocked with jars of spices, and a large hood you might expect to see in a professional kitchen hangs over her stove. A former securities analyst on Wall Street, she ran the communications program at Yale’s School of Management and worked as a management consultant. Judy is also the author of “Love and Memory: Food Through the Generations,” a cookbook she wrote for her family that captures their treasured recipes from smoked trout to matzah brei, limoncello, and several charosets.

When Judy was growing up on Long Island, food was something functional for her family, a necessity, but not something to enjoy preparing. “My mother could barely boil water — mostly because she chose not to,” recalls Judy, who turns 90 this summer. While her Hungarian grandmother cooked, a rift in the family kept Judy and her parents from large family gatherings and she doesn’t remember ever eating a full meal at her grandmother’s home.  

Judy learned to cook when she married her husband of 58 years Mike in 1956. Mike was a good cook, as was his mother, and when the pair got engaged, she gifted Judy a copy of the iconic “Gourmet Cookbook.” “I learned to cook from that and by having a husband who told me I was wonderful,” Judy shares.    

Together, Judy and Mike hosted Passover Seders in Connecticut where “we rarely had fewer than 20 people at the table,” Judy writes in her cookbook. She served turkey with matzah stuffing, which worked well for a crowd. 

In the 1970s, Mike came across a charoset recipe in the New York Times that was different from the Ashkenazi one with apples and walnuts they were both familiar with. It sparked a passion for seeking out different charoset recipes. On trips to New York City, they would visit Barnes & Noble to peruse Jewish cookbooks and when Judy traveled overseas for work or pleasure, she would learn about the charoset traditions of the local communities and add them to the collection.

When they retired to the town of Belfast on Maine’s coast in 1993, they continued hosting Seder with a spread of charosets. They spoke to their guests about how each highlights the ingredients Jewish communities had access to historically — chestnuts in Venice, coconuts in Suriname, dried figs and dates in Yemen. That prompted a discussion about what would belong in a Maine charoset. They settled on blueberries and cranberries, both of which grow in the state.