Meatloaf with cider and hard-boiled eggs

An economical recipe from the war years – so suitable for the pre-Christmas days of fast before feast – as cooked by my Edinburgh-born grandmother. She kept Rhode Island Reds to eat up the leftovers from the RAF canteen at the airfield where my grandfather was stationed, supplying the pilots’ wives with fresh eggs and exchanging any surplus for meat from the butcher.

She continued to keep chickens in later years – every egg, she said, must do its duty – and would send me out to the