Cuban culinary guru Nitza Villapol -- who taught generations of Cubans how to cook and, in the last decades, how to cope with a ration book and acute food shortages -- has died in Havana at age 74, Cuba's official press announced Tuesday.

The circumstances of her death were not reported.

Villapol was known for her cookbook Cocina al minuto (Cooking to Order), dubbed ``the bible of Cuban cuisine,'' and for her TV show of the same name. A Cuban Julia Child of sorts, she also starred on radio cooking shows and wrote at least two other books on Cuban cooking.

In the 1950s, young brides took their cooking lessons from Villapol. Some of them later fled to exile in South Florida with their worn copies of Villapol's Cocina al minuto. Copies of the book -- reprinted in the United States without her permission, Villapol once complained -- still circulate in Spanish-language bookstores in Miami-Dade County.

A home economist, Villapol became well versed in making do with little while studying in wartime England. She put the skills to work decades later in what became her greatest challenge -- and a controversial role: teaching Cubans how to cook without meat, milk and a whole range of spices indispensable to traditional Cuban cooking.

Many Cubans resented her cheerful approach to the shortages, while others poked fun. Villapol took it in stride.

``The first thing I think about is, `What does the Cuban homemaker have and what can be done with it?' '' she told a Herald reporter in 1991. ``We're not starving here. . . . If you have good food habits, you can have a balanced diet in Cuba. Food habits [in Cuba] are geared toward a society, an economy, that no longer exists.''

Villapol liked to say she was ``a cultural hybrid.'' Named after a Russian river by her communist father, she spent her early years in New York. Her parents returned to the island when she was 9.

Villapol was fond of the food she remembered from her days living in Washington Heights -- Fig Newtons, liverwurst and Good Humor ice cream.

But she detested mayonnaise. ``An American invention to ruin food,'' she called it.

Unlike many Cuban cooks, Villapol said she seldom made a sofrito, the traditional oil-based seasoning mix used to spice up various dishes. She preferred to season the food as she cooked it, she said.

In South Florida, Villapol was a controversial figure because of her unyielding support of the Cuban Revolution.

``I believe this damn revolution is right, despite all our problems,'' Villapol said in 1991.

She also criticized Cubans for not eating enough vegetables. ``To old Cubans,'' she said, ``salad is grass and water. It's not food.''

Although Villapol wrote two other cookbooks -- Sabor a Cuba (The Flavor of Cuba)  and El arte de la cocina cubana (The Art of Cuban Cuisine)  -- it was Cocina al minuto  that remained a favorite on both sides of the Florida Straits.

Perusing the first editions is like visiting yesterday's Cuba. The book is filled with advertisements for American products -- a finned 1958 Dodge being sold on bustling La Rampa, a new two-cycle Whirlpool washer, Osterizer blenders.

In the first revision after the revolution, all references to the brand names were dropped.