The recipe
Shortbread in Name, Savory in Practice
Onion Shortbread is the title carried forward in the site’s legacy records for a recipe associated with Gourmet Cooking with a Flair (1961). The unusual name is being preserved exactly while the original cookbook page is re-cataloged.
The current legacy recipe card is savory rather than sweet: thin-sliced onions are cooked in butter, mixed with egg and salt, spread over rolled biscuit dough and topped with chopped bacon.
It is baked in an 8-by-12-inch pan at 450°F until golden, roughly 15 to 20 minutes. Until the source scan is attached, those details remain part of the legacy digital record rather than a newly reconstructed recipe.
Why it matters
Why This One Is Worth Bringing Back
Onion Shortbread is another recipe whose title creates one expectation and whose ingredients immediately overturn it. The legacy card describes biscuit dough topped with cooked onions, egg and chopped bacon, baked until golden in a shallow pan.
The value of keeping the original name is that it preserves the recipe’s own vocabulary instead of renaming it into something more searchable but less faithful. The archive can explain what the dish is without erasing what the source called it.
That tension shows up elsewhere in the same cookbook. Dutch Cupboard Cheese Pie is savory despite the word “pie,” and Brunswick Stew preserves a chicken-based version rather than forcing the dish into a single modern definition.
Modern kitchen notes
If You're Making It Today
These are modern editorial suggestions, not changes to the archived recipe. When a variation comes directly from the original source, we will say so.
Cook the onions before they hit the dough
The source has the onions cooked in butter before they are mixed with egg and spread over the biscuit base. Do not rely on the short bake to soften raw onion.
Keep the bacon on top
The chopped crisp bacon is part of the recorded finish. Treat it as a topping over the onion layer rather than mixing it invisibly into the dough.
Vegetarian would be an adaptation
You can certainly experiment without bacon, but that becomes a modern variation. The archived version includes bacon and should remain intact in the recipe card.
Recipe card
The Preserved Recipe
Onion Shortbread
Ingredients
- 6 small onions sliced thin
- 1 tsp salt
- 5 slices bacon
- 1 egg beaten
- 4 tbsp butter
- 1 sheet rolled biscuit dough enough to cover an 8×12 pan
Instructions
- Cook the bacon in a skillet or in the oven until crispy enough to chop. Let the bacon cool, and chop into small pieces.
- Melt butter in a skillet, and sauté onions until soft, around 5-10 minutes.
- Remove from heat and mix in beaten egg and salt.
- Roll out biscuit dough onto an 8″ by 12″ pan.
- Over the dough, spread the onion and egg mixture, and sprinkle with the chopped bacon.
- Bake in a 450º oven until golden brown, roughly 15-20 minutes.
- Serve, and enjoy!
Notes
Nutrition
From the archive
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