Of America’s icons of summer, only one remains unbowed.

Baseball? Nope. Despite the devotion of Cardinals fans, the game is no longer considered the nation’s pastime. Picnics? There’s no connectivity.

But the corn dog still stands as a reminder of days warm and fair.

It’s just a hot dog propped on a stick and smothered in batter. Yet few foods express festivals and fun like the corn dog.

Indeed, vendors at the Texas State Fair sell more than 600,000 of them every year. And the treat is equally popular at Minnesota’s state fair, an event many treat as a corn dog pilgrimage -- except they call them Pronto Pups, but more on that in a moment.

“I think people relate corn dogs to fairs and the summer,” said Katie Gruender, owner and pitmaster of Tex Red’s BBQ in Centralia.

Despite the appeal of smoked brisket and pulled pork, Tex Red’s sees a run on their corn dogs through the warmer months. And why not? The batter is almost ethereal – like a downy corn pudding under a crisp veneer.

The sweetness found in many other recipes is dialed down to a natural tinge which complements a briny note easing from the meat. A trace of smokiness scored into the crust by sweltering oil drifts in between.

A corn dog such as this one can soothe the soul.

Gruender starts with quarter-pound all beef hot dogs. But it’s the cornmeal batter that makes it stand apart.

She says the recipe is “pretty basic.” It’s something she inherited from the restaurant’s previous owners and tweaked a little. The secret is somewhere in the proportion of flour, cornmeal, egg and seasoning, timing and temperature.

That the corn dog is part of the American culinary pantheon has never been in question. Who gets credit for its invention, however, is a heated matter.

On one side are the devotees of Pronto Pups. The other is massed with fervid Texans and their corny dogs. The Sharks and Jets in choreographed verbal brawl around a deep fryer.

Legend holds that on a rain swept Labor Day weekend in 1939, Oregon hot dog vendor George Boyington despaired as his stack of buns slumped into a sodden mess. In a moment of inspiration, he created a batter as a substitute.

Boyington did trademark Pronto Pup in 1942. When his franchised corn dog arrived at the Minnesota State Fair in 1947, it was a sensation. More than 100,000 Pronto Pups were sold in a few days.

The same year Boyington received his trademark, brothers Carl and Neil Fletcher introduced their corn dog – Fletcher’s Corny Dog – to the Texas State Fair. As the story goes, their inspiration was a baked sausage popular in Dallas. From there the brothers spent months testing batter recipes.

It’s plausible. So perhaps Boyington and the Fletchers share corn dog honors? Historians and writers such as Tracy Mumford with Minnesota Public Radio have tried to clear up the corn dog controversy. What they found challenges both origin stories.

For instance, in 1939, syndicated New York columnist Alice Hughes offered a tidbit to her readers about a dinner with friends from Dallas who spoke of “one of their home-town delicacies, ‘the corn-dog.’ Hughes described it as a frankfurter baked in cornbread.

A year later, a Louisiana paper, the Monroe News-Star, hailed “Corn Dog sandwiches” and estimated that 70,000 of these had been sold in New Orleans just three weeks after being introduced to the city.

So two clues that lend some credibility to the southern origins of the corn dog – except that neither version is fried. And there is no mention of a stick.

Perhaps the corn dogs creating such a frenzy can be linked to the Krusty Korn Sausage Dog Pan. It appeared in a 1929 wholesale catalog and was pitched for its versatility – one could use it on gas, oil or coal stoves – and clever design.

The hot dog emerged from the pan encased by cornbread shaped like an ear of corn. Maybe this was the dish that set the Fletchers on their corn dog quest.

It is possible that Americans tasted their first corn dogs in 1929, but not thanks to the dog pan. U.S. patent number 1706491A applied for that year granted rights to Stanley Jenkins of Buffalo for a device that would cook battered food on a stick in 390 degree oil.

In the application, Jenkins claims to have discovered that “wieners, boiled ham, hard boiled eggs, cheese, sliced peaches, pineapples” and other foods impaled – his word – on sticks and dipped in batter “is a clean, wholesome and tasty refreshment.”

Perhaps the folks at Tex Red’s should expand their menu.