Food magazines including Gourmet and Bon Appetit are increasingly publishing articles on cooking and eating on a budget,

After covering eating trends that have included haute pub food, exotic fruits like yuzu, and restaurants that dehydrated, foamed and froze everything from meat to dessert, upscale food magazines are writing about an even more unexpected topic: cheap home eating.

Reflecting the bad economy, Gourmet, which usually writes about expensive restaurants and faraway travel, has added a feature about what to do with leftovers, and put a ham sandwich — albeit a fancy one — on its March cover.

Food & Wine’s March issue includes an essay on buying the cheapest bottle on a wine list. Bon Appétit’s April cover trumpets a “low-cost, big-flavor” pizza party.
“There is an incredible opportunity,” said Ruth Reichl, the editor in chief of Gourmet. “People need help learning to cook again, and they need advice on less-expensive ingredients, and we’re trying to give it to them.”

The budget-minded approach is one that seems to resonate with readers. Despite the economy, food magazines remain popular: most recorded gains or only slight drops in the most recent Audit Bureau of Circulations report, which compared the last six months of 2008 with the period a year earlier.

As the high-end magazines try to survive a shaky 2009, it is out with the truffles, in with the button mushrooms.

“There are ways in which we feel it should change,” said Dana Cowin, the editor in chief of Food & Wine, published by American Express Publishing. “We don’t, for example, do recipes that involve loads of foie gras and shavings of truffles.”
Bon Appétit, too, is altering its mix. “We encouraged our readers to still indulge; have caviar, but try Carolina rainbow trout caviar; instead of beef tenderloin, make an eye of round beef roast,” Barbara Fairchild, the magazine’s editor in chief, said by e-mail.

Gourmet has added a feature called Cook Smart that “has a budgetary mind-set, where you can take a dish and play it out over a couple of days and use the leftovers effectively,” said Nancy Berger Cardone, the publisher.

But the changes do not seem to be doing much for advertisers. The classic, older food magazines are struggling with big declines in advertising pages.

The industry’s grande dame, Gourmet, lost almost a quarter of its ad pages in 2008, while Cooking Light was down 21 percent, Bon Appétit dropped 17 percent, and Food & Wine fell 8 percent, according to Media Industry Newsletter figures.

The first three issues of 2009 have shown even worse ad page declines. Gourmet is down 42 percent compared with a year ago, Cooking Light is down 18 percent, Bon Appétit is down 26 percent, and Food & Wine fell 30 percent, according to the newsletter’s figures.

Condé Nast owns both Gourmet and Bon Appétit, leading some media buyers to question whether, in an era when readers may turn away from luxury food magazines, the company will fold one of the titles into the other.

Charles Townsend, the president and chief executive of Condé Nast, said that was not a consideration.

“Gourmet and B. A. are two completely different magazines, both in their editorial point of view and in their audiences,” Mr. Townsend said through a spokeswoman.

“Both are circulation powerhouses, and I’m perfectly content with both properties as businesses.”

The food magazines have suffered from pullbacks in automobile, home décor and travel spending. While food advertising has declined, some grocery store brands, like Kellogg and Hershey, have said they would increase advertising this year. Gourmet recently signed up new mass-market advertisers, including Post Selects cereal and Swanson broth.

But Ms. Reichl said her new approach was not meant to bring in advertisers. “We do the editorial for the readers, not for the advertisers,” she said.

Gourmet was first published in 1941, as American interest in Europe was being heightened by World War II. The founder, Earle R. MacAusland, correctly guessed that an interest in European cooking would follow. Bon Appétit, started in 1956, ran affordable, easy recipes meant for homemakers. It was purchased by Condé Nast in 1993 and became more upscale.

Cooking Light won an audience as the Jazzercisers of the 1980s turned their attention to healthy food. And, as yuppies sought out $17 fleur de sel from Brittany and installed Viking Range stoves in their kitchens in the 1990s, new magazines reflected those interests, including Fine Cooking, Cook’s Illustrated and Saveur.
Recently, as television networks anointed cooking stars and ease became a focus in a hurried world, a new take on food magazines developed. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia introduced Everyday Food in 2003. And in 2005, the Reader’s Digest Association started Every Day With Rachael Ray and Hoffman Media began publishing Cooking With Paula Deen.

All of those quickly shot to high circulations. Every Day With Rachael Ray has a circulation of 1.78 million, up 7.1 percent from last year, according to the audit bureau. Cooking With Paula Deen is at 804,000, and Everyday Food has a circulation of 992,000, up 7.8 percent.

These celebrity-driven magazines have been popular with advertisers, too. A companion television show, cookbook and Web site, along with branded products like pans, grab much more attention than a magazine alone.

With venerable magazines competing with the second wave, and in turn with the celebrity fad, it is a crowded market.

“A magazine that’s relatively new,” said Jack Hanrahan, the publisher of the industry newsletter CircMatters and former director of print at the agency OMD, “may in fact have some advantages over some of the more established books. I do think unless these magazines find other ways of bringing in revenue besides the printed-page revenue, I do think there are too many of them.”

Carolyn Dubi, director of print at Initiative, which buys advertising space for companies like MillerCoors and Dr Pepper, agrees that “there probably are too many magazines in this category.” She says some of the newest contenders are smart in their approach. “I do think that the key really comes down to branding your magazine across multiple platforms,” she said, as Rachael Ray and Paula Deen have.

Cooking With Paula Deen’s ad pages rose 18 percent in 2008, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. Every Day With Rachael Ray was up 3 percent.

Hearst, taking note of this trend, is introducing a food magazine focused entirely on Food Network stars.

“People have always followed chefs in one form or another, but I think putting it in the television format has been something that has hit a chord,” said Michael Clinton, the chief marketing officer and publishing director of Hearst Magazines. Hearst has put two test issues of Food Network Magazine on newsstands and is to begin publishing regularly this summer, with a circulation of 600,000 planned by fall.

The two most popular magazines in the category are solidly at the low end. Taste of Home, a collection of reader-submitted recipes published by the Reader’s Digest Association, has a circulation of 3.2 million. And Food and Family has a circulation of 7 million. Who figured out the formula for such a popular magazine? Though a division of the media company Meredith produces the magazine, it is the maker of Cheez Whiz and Oscar Mayer that created and pays for it: Kraft Foods.