Burning Question: Why does eggnog only come in a carton these days?

No cocktail has suffered a greater fall than eggnog.

OK, so it seems to be everywhere this time of year. For a month or so, eggnog crowds soy and almond milk from grocery coolers. The insipid milk syrup has become the modern standard for the drink—sweet and childish, only occasionally laced with a faint taste of alcohol.

It’s sad, when you think about it. No punch bowls full of the stuff at office parties. No eggnog nights at the local pub. Not even the most experimental bars—the ones known for meticulous mixology—dare to add it to their menu.

“In my six years here, we’ve yet to serve eggnog,” reports Rory Philbin, a manager at Tarpy’s Roadhouse on Highway 68.

Now, bar manager Josh Perry at Cultura Comida y Bebida in Carmel recently created what he calls “The Scotch Egg,” with whiskey, an Italian herbal liqueur, cream and egg. Sounds good, but hardly a nod to tradition—and really more of an anomaly.

As a barroom cocktail or party drink, eggnog is largely forgotten.

“No one’s ever asked for it,” says Maria Bekay of Bar Sebastián in the Monterey Tides Hotel.

But why? Well, when you look back at eggnog’s rowdy past, maybe it’s for the best.

You see, American’s were once a hard-drinking lot. Rum was cheap, as was rough, backwoods whiskey. On any given night, evenings would devolve into “Idleness, Gaming, peevishness, quarrelling, Fighting, Horse-Racing, Lying and Swearing, Stealing and Swindling, Perjury, Burglary, Murder.”

The author of those words was not talking about the legendary gunslinging at wild west saloons. Nope—Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote that bit in 1784.

Yes, that Dr. Benjamin Rush. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, and for some reason a man given to putting horse racing on the same criminal level as burglary and murder.

The nation’s Founding Fathers were buzzed most of the time. Colonists—and then Americans—pounded down an average of seven gallons of pure alcohol each year. That’s seven gallons of ethanol, not counting the other stuff that make up a drink. And that’s compared to the 2.34 gallons per person per year we barely tolerate today.

Sorta explains the near blows between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson over the spelling of inalienable. Hell, maybe the founders were so drunk they didn’t even know what they were signing.

Either way, chugging was a way of life. The first political standoff in American history—after that little tiff with the British—was known as The Whiskey Rebellion, after all.

Eggnog was a critical part of all this boozing. American farms and plantations had eggs. They had cream. They had plenty of rum. And when stirring up a batch of the nog, they poured with a free hand.

One George Washington jotted down his version of eggnog thusly: “One quart cream, one quart milk, one dozen tablespoons sugar, one pint brandy, 1/2 pint rye whiskey, 1/2 pint Jamaica rum, 1/4 pint sherry—mix liquor first, then separate yolks and whites of eggs, add sugar to beaten yolks, mix well. Add milk and cream, slowly beating. Beat whites of eggs until stiff and fold slowly into mixture. Let set in cool place for several days. Taste frequently.”

Taste frequently. The Father of Our Country sneaking repeatedly into the kitchen for surreptitious dips from the punch bowl. Spoils the whole cherry tree image.

And he was so soused he forgot to note just how many eggs go into the recipe.

It’s that sort of thing that caused Dr. Rush to condemn eggnog and other potent drinks in his An Inquiry Into the Effects of Ardent Spirits on the Human Mind and Body.

Already we know that over-consumption of alcohol led to horse racing and revolution. But Dr. Rush singled out “Toddy and Egg Rum” on his intemperance scale as causing “Tremors of the hands” and leading to time in the hoosegow.

Wow. No wonder eggnog fell from favor.

What is interesting here is that Dr. Rush deemed beer and wine OK for the public temperament. Yet those inclined to research such matters trace eggnog’s origins to posset, a Medieval concoction of milk mixed with ale, and syllabub, which involved milk, sugar and wine.

Yeah—sugar and milk, mixed with wine.

“Folks back then were probably more interested in making their milk/egg concoction safer to consume so they needed alcohol to do that,” says Annette Hoff, winemaker for Cima Collina in Carmel Valley.

She’s probably right. In a 2012 Mental Floss article, Alton Brown of television’s Good Eats fame noted that “As long as your brew contains at least 20 percent alcohol...any microbial nasties that might haunt your innards should be nice and dead.”

So the guy on the dollar knew what he was doing, after all. But wine and milk?

“Milk is sometimes added to wine as a fining agent to reduce astringency,” Hoff points out. “There are concentrated casein products we use now, but still sometimes it’s done the old fashioned way.”

Hoff notes that she has witnessed gallon jugs of whole milk being dumped into vats of red wine.

“Adding a small percentage of milk to wine improves the wine—go figure,” she says.

But sugar?

“We can't legally add sugar to wine in California,” she notes. “But it’s not something I'd really want to do, anyway.”

But it's hard to say why eggnog was committed to cartons. Except for this and its disappearance from bars and restaurants, eggnog's evolution had been rather positive. It adapts well to rum, whiskey and similar spirits. The basic recipe for modern eggnog—from scratch with good ingredients—produces a creamy, delicate, smoky and sweet cocktail. The richness of it might knock you out before the alcohol content.

And when you think about it, there’s an elegance to eggnog lost in all those early tales of nog-related mayhem. Eggs, milk and sugar are also the foundation of ice cream. The combination is familiar outside of the U.S., as well. For example, rompope is a beautiful Mexican version, savored as a holiday liqueur.

To compare supermarket cartons to real eggnog is like using Boone’s Farm in the same sentence as the lauded 1990 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Grand Cru...uh oh.

Anyway, it’s curious why eggnog remains a prepackaged sugar rush consumed only at home.

“You can make it warm or cold, you can make it festive,” Bekay says. “With brandy and Kahlua, it’s real good.”

Perhaps there’s a lingering fear. Maybe bartenders worry that adding eggnog to their list of cocktails would spur an increase in attendance at horse racing tracks, hipsters clad in jockey silks and the scourge of laminitis.

Or maybe Dr. Rush was wrong on this one.

In answer to this week's Burning Question, one must figure that convenience plays a part. Look back at George's recipe. That's a lot of effort for a few noggins of alcohol—stirring and stirring, tasting and tasting until it finally comes together. And then it gets better if you let it rest for awhile.

Yes, the recipe is sweet and strong, enough to knock some teeth out. But a trip to the store is easier.

Still, there may be some latent interest in bringing eggnog back among the barkeeping community.

“I can’t remember the last time I had eggnog,” Philbin says, pondering the classic recipe. “I wouldn’t mind giving it a shot.”