May 5, 1982

International A British destroyer was disabled and set afire by an Argentine jet fighter, Britain announced. The destroyer Sheffield, struck by a high-explosive missile, was abandoned and was said to have sunk. Defense Minister John Nott said that as many as 30 members of the crew, which normally totals 299, might have died despite intensive rescue efforts. In Washington, intelligence sources said that a major naval battle was still raging off the Falklands. Earlier, Britain announced that a fighter-bomber had been shot down during a raid on air strips in the islands and that the pilot had been killed. (Page A1, Column 6.) Argentina announced the rescue of at least 680 survivors from the torpedoed cruiser General Belgrano and said that a search was continuing for the 362 other crew members. The American Embassy in Buenos Aires said it was evacuating ''nonessential personnel'' and dependents. (A1:5.)

CUISINE By MOIRA HODGSON UNTIL recently, cooks in the United States looked to Europe for inspiration. But now there is a serious attempt being made to define and practice a new American cuisine. It is an inventive and eclectic style adopted by a growing number of young chefs across the country. Their ideas may borrow from the French nouvelle cuisine but the dishes are totally distinctive because they are made from American ingredients - quail raised in New Jersey, scallops from Nantucket, wild mushrooms gathered in the mountains of Oregon. This style has actually been evolving for a number of years, ever since the cooking boom first hit this country in the early 70's, bringing with it a proliferation of fine restaurants, specialty shops, cooking classes and best-selling cookbooks. But it has come into its own more recently as food producers, many of them small cottage industries, have developed sources in this country for items that have either been long neglected or once came only from Europe. These include fine milk-fed veal, Charolais beef, goat and blue cheeses, Brie, morels, chanterelles, olive oil and sweet, succulent oysters from Hawaii that are now being exported to France. Many of these products are raised in remote parts of the country and then flown in, while others are raised locally on small farms that supply restaurants and even some retail stores, making them available to home cooks, too.

The Economic Scene column in Business Day last Friday incorrectly indentified Charles L. Schultze. He served as Director of the Budget in the Johnson Administration and as man of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Carter Administration.

Mother's chicken soup, move over. Father's chicken soup, specifically, divorced father's chicken soup, is advancing from the back burner. The recipe appears in the current issue of Divorced Father, a new monthly newsletter. ''Your kids can take it home in a jar,'' the publisher suggests. ''They'll think of you all week while eating chicken soup.'' Mixing it up in the kitchen is becoming a popular pastime for divorced fathers who do not have custody of their children. Rather than play the cliched roles of Zoo Daddy or McDonald's Daddy, growing numbers of weekend fathers are turning to cooking as a less expensive, more natural way of being together. ''Noncustodial cooking,'' they call it.

Britain's allies reacted with shock and dismay today to the sinking of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, with the presumed loss of many lives. News of Argentina's retaliatory attack against the British destroyer Sheffield reached Europe too late at night for reaction. But even before the news of the British loss, European governments were calling for an end to the fighting, in the interests of both sides. In Washington, Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. abruptly canceled a trip to New York for a speech and rushed back from the airport to the State Department, where he met for three and a half hours with Sir Nicholas Henderson, the British Ambassador. (Page A16.)