As a child, I ate James Cagney eggs at least once a week. I didn’t know who James Cagney was, and my mother, who regularly made this dish for breakfast, never told me. Or I never asked. Only much later did I begin to wonder why a slice of bread with a hole punched out and an egg dropped in was named for a movie star who usually played gangsters. The buttered slice was gently fried in a skillet (the little punched-out bread round was fried too). A deft turn
