In addition to shuttering Gourmet, Conde Nast said it was also killing parenting magazine Cookie and two wedding magazines, Elegant Bride and Modern Bride.

"In this economic climate it is important to narrow our focus to titles with the greatest prospects for long-term growth," Townsend wrote.

Roughly 180 people were affected by the news of the four titles closing, according to Condé Nast spokeswoman Maurie Perl.

According to Townsend, Conde Nast will continue to use the Gourmet brand in book publishing and television programming, and Gourmet recipes will still appear on Epicurious.com. The publisher's other epicurean title, Bon Appétit, will remain intact.

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 Appetit'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."