HOMETOWN COOKING IN NEW ENGLAND, by Sandra J. Taylor, Down East Books, Camden, Maine, 372 pages, $17.95.

Trying out a new recipe can be a gamble; either you relish the new dish or you’ve wasted your time and money.

But a new cookbook, “Hometown Cooking in New England,” complied by Sandra J. Taylor, has removed some of that risk.

Taylor scoured New England for old and new hometown cookbooks that were published to raise funds. It wasn’t as easy a job as the author had first thought, because many of the cookbooks produced seldom left the communities where they were created.

After sending out a mass mailing describing her book project to everyone she knew in the region, and after calling bookstores, libraries and town offices, the author managed to obtain more than 100 different cookbooks.

Armed with the huge collection, Taylor combed through the pages of the cookbooks selecting certain recipes in different categories for testing. She enlisted a host of willing men and women, including family members, to prepare the recipes and evaluate the results. She then chose only those recipes that received the best evaluations for inclusion in her book.

The recipes underwent a further review recently when this reporter prepared some of the selections and tried them out on a hungry group of Piscataquis County employees.

Moist, molasses-scented Ginger-Spiced Muffins elicited the best response.

“It was awesome,” said Piscataquis County District Attorney R. Christopher Almy after devouring one of the gingerbreadlike delicacies.

Deputy Chief Sgt. David Roberts of the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department is a consummate cook and well known for his wholesome bean-hole beans. He proclaimed the muffins were excellent.

“I bet they’d be good with cream cheese,” he added. About once a month, Roberts and his extended family peruse old cookbooks for outlandish recipes to bake and then get together for tasting sessions. “We see what works and what doesn’t,” he said.

Lisa Richardson, Piscataquis County clerk of courts, noted the muffin recipe also would be suitable as a sheet cake for dessert topped with whipped cream.

“Mmmmmm, good, I’d make these,” said Elaine Roberts, administrative assistant to the district attorney, musing that nuts would add an extra touch to the muffins.

While the Abbot Coffee Cake was considered tasty by the county workers, it didn’t rate has high as the muffins. Some, like Jail Administrator Ed Marsh, considered the cake that had a topping of nuts, cinnamon and brown sugar good, but too dry. Like nearly every recipe in the book, this coffeecake called for unbleached flour.

The Glazed Lemon Nut Bread, an old Nantucket recipe for a tea bread, also received rave reviews. The lemon sugar drizzled on top of the bread made the recipe a favorite among the tasters.

From breakfast to dinner, the recipes in “Hometown Cooking in New England” run the gamut. There’s Granny’s Granola, taken from the American Cancer Society’s Maine Division in Brunswick; Braided Sesame Bread, included first in The Haystack Cookbook published by the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle; and Quilter’s Potato Salad, lifted from The Kinderhaus Cookbook crafted by the Kinderhaus Children’s Center in Williston, Vt.

Taylor’s book includes the names of the cookbooks in which the recipes were first published and the addresses where the hometown cookbooks can be obtained.