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Notes -
Bottom line is it's always trial and error to a degree, but you'd be foolish not to do the basic book research first. There'll be a database somewhere with climate zones and the corresponding plants/crops/varieties because it's such a perennial concern. If you wanted a better answer than I can give you maybe try looking for a local horti/agricultural college with a friendly librarian. Printed seed catalogues from local vendors are good too and probably a more user friendly format than an online catalogue as they offer more discoverability than a janky proprietary search engine, plus you know they'll be available to buy instead of reading up in a book or blog that you found via Google about what sounds like a perfect plant and then finding that the only people who sell seeds are on a different continent and want $30 for postage of a $2 pack of seeds.
If you wanted to do things The Proper Way you'd start by doing a survey of your plot for soil composition, temps, rainfall, sun/shade aspects etc before even planning what to plant but that might not be practical if you're working around an existing set of planting - it's not worth ripping out a mature ornamental tree just to vacate the best spot for heirloom cabbages. USDA zones are the baseline, you can probably find a map that will show you your average last frost date too.
In common sense terms though it's more like don't get carried away and decide that mangoes, avocadoes and vanilla pods are delicious and expensive so they'd make good home growers. You potentially could techno-fix them so that they would grow (heated glasshouse, supplemental lights, irrigation, frost protection, humming bird mimicry hand pollination, etc) but it will always be more trouble than it's worth. At the other end of the scale for instance where I live blackberries grow like a weed, so although I could grow them very easily I can just as easily gather them from any number of field hedges should I choose to while at home I cultivate tayberries (a raspberry x blackberry hybrid) that I've never seen for sale in a shop. All I do is prune it once a year and it grows so well that the only care it needs is tying up to train and support it.
I don't actually have a lot of experience growing for the table/pantry, I mostly grow ornamentals on a casual sink-or-swim basis, I just get a bit vexed when I see people getting into grow-your-own and they spend their time and resources growing basic staples in a plot too small to ever achieve a fraction of self sufficiency. I like carrots as much as the next man but I can buy a whole bag of them for 50p any day of the year. I like strawberries too, but even at soft fruit farms I've never seen alpine strawberries for sale. They're too small to be remotely economical commercially, but they're so good that they're worth growing at home alongside or even instead of a higher yielding variety.
The berry farms that visit my local farmers market had these, and Loganberries, which are similar, for a few weeks. This week they were back to black/blue/rasp/straw. Although I have also seen black cap raspberries, which are slightly more exotic.
I highly recommend thimbleberries. They are much too delicate to ever be commercially viable, and they are incredibly delicious.
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