For decades, the Reader's Digest people, working from Pleasantville, put out a pint-size magazine that dispensed snippets of wisdom and humor amid condensed articles for consumption by tens of millions of Americans. Its distinctive size was a familiar sight in barbershops and doctors' waiting rooms and on checkout stands at the local supermarket.

More and more, Reader's Digest Association is about cooking. Last fall, the company launched Every Day with Rachael Ray, the Food Network star, which in October will up its rate base to 750,000. It publishes Taste of Home, which claims 3.36 million readers, and in March, the company bought the foodie web site allrecipes.com.

This week, the publisher is launching Dazzling Delightful Delicious, an Australian import with a digest-size format that targets a bit more upscale than Rachael Ray, though also emphasizing the quick and easy over the complicated presentations of the traditional culinary magazines.

Dazzling Delightful Delicious mingles recipes from celebrity chefs with kicked-up photography, promising sophisticated, innovative fare for the untrained but enthusiastic chef.

The idea, says publisher Christine Guilfoyle, who is also publisher of Every Day, is to provide marketers with a wider reach. "Marketers are looking for 360-degree marketing opportunities," she says, and "Reader's Digest is making acquisitions and launching products to round out the areas that they already have a stake in."

The magazine arrives on newsstands as a test launch, with 620,000 copies.

Delicious targets women 25-49 and attempts to hit an in-between audience that is more upscale and affluent than Martha Stewart's Everyday Food or Every Day with Rachael Ray.

"How it specifically differentiates itself from the marketplace is the high-quality graphics and the fun that it brings to the different dishes," Guilfoyle says.

"It's the combination of recipes from world-renowned chefs that are very easy, but sophisticated and beautiful, and the kinds of [cooking] techniques that all of us would like to incorporate into our repertoires."

The first issue includes recipes and tips from Jamie Oliver, the British chef, as well as concept-based stories like "Kids at the Table," on ways to get children involved in food preparation.

Much of the content comes directly from Australia's Delicious magazine, a monthly produced by Federal Publishing Company. That version has won awards for its design, and that raises an issue about the U.S. edition.

Why the digest size? If anything cooking magazines are about presentation, which usually requires a full-size title.

Checkout positioning, for one thing, Guilfoyle says. And perhaps identification with Reader's Digest, which still commands a nearly 10 million circulation.

The test issue, which went on sale at $3.99, carries eight advertisers, including Pepperidge Farms, Bertolli, GE and Amstel Light. A second test issue comes in July.

Later this month, a glossy Delicious bookazine goes on sale for $14.99 at bookstores and supermarkets, with a planned distribution of 250,000 copies. Newsstand sales and feedback from readers and advertisers will help determine whether and when Reader's Digest will set a regular frequency for publishing Delicious.

But there's no doubt it's a promising category. "There's a lot of food and kitchen advertising, as well as non-endemic advertising," says consultant Martin Walker of Walker Communications. Walker thinks readers might find the digest size convenient for cooking. He thinks it could draw any number of home goods advertisers as well as large food advertisers, beyond the niche gourmet advertisers.