• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, June 22, 2010

Gourmet, the venerable epicurean title that was axed by Conde Nast last year, has been resurrected. Conde Nast is bringing the title brand back as a mobile social app for smartphones and Apple's iPad, which will give users access to the magazine's huge archive of premium food-related content beginning in November.

However, Gourmet Live doesn't mean a return to editorial production for the magazine itself; there won't be any new issues of Gourmet magazine, or new articles published under the Gourmet brand.

Gourmet Live is available for smartphones, including the iPhone and BlackBerry, as well as phones using Google's Android operating system and e-readers like Apple's new iPad. The app will monetize social media consumption with game-like functions for earning virtual currency (modeled loosely on other apps like Foursquare) -- by recruiting friends and sharing articles and recipes.

The news of a revived digital presence for Gourmet comes on the heels of a year-long push to expand the digital content offerings and audience for Conde Nast's food titles, including its Web destination, Epicurious.com.

In April, Conde relaunched the "Epicurious Recipes and Shopping List" as "Cook's Companion," which offers cookbook layouts, enhanced shopping lists and bookmark-tracking for users who are searching its database of over 28,000 recipes, drawn from the archives of Gourmet and Bon Appétit. Epicurous also draws on outside content, like wine pairing suggestions from Snooth.com.

More recently, last week Parade and Conde Nast announced the launch of new newspaper-distributed monthly food magazine Dash, drawing on content from Bon Appetit, Gourmet and Epicurious, as well as content from Parade.

The Dash Web site -- dashrecipes.com -- will go live in September, and the print edition will debut shortly afterward with a holiday issue in November. The monthly publication schedule will begin in February 2011, with a planned circulation of 8 million covering roughly 100 top newspapers, skewed to large suburban markets.

Gourmet will contribute "Gourmet Recommends," covering products including cookbooks, appliances and ingredients.