Paul McCartney's Secret Soup Recipe Is Hidden In An Unexpected Place

Paul McCartney is typically seen as the Beatles' consummate pop songwriter, someone known for their gift for melody and occasional taste for treacle. Many also may know McCartney as someone with strong personal convictions, especially in regard to his longstanding commitment to animal rights and vegetarianism. A few anecdotes: he wrote a letter to the Dalai Lama asking why he still ate meat. He declined "Weird Al" Yankovic's request to release a parody of "Live and Let Die" called "Chicken Pot Pie," as he didn't want to promote meat eating; Yankovic, himself a vegetarian, understood. And when McCartney was asked to appear in an episode of "The Simpsons" where Lisa becomes a vegetarian, he agreed — on the condition that Lisa would remain a vegetarian for the rest of the series.

Oh, and he made sure to include a terrific recipe for lentil soup in the episode's credits, played backwards in a call-back to an earlier joke.

In "The Simpsons" episode called "Lisa the Vegetarian," Lisa Simpson decides to stop eating meat after encountering a lamb at a petting zoo. As you might expect from someone with Homer Simpson as a father, this results in some conflict, and she ends up running away from home for a brief while, confiding in the vegan Kwik-E-Mart owner Apu — as well as Paul and Linda McCartney, who befriended Apu during their time in India. The pair voiced themselves, playing up their reputations as famous vegetarians. Poking fun at the "backmasking" conspiracy theories that followed rock bands in general and the Beatles in particular, Paul says that, if his song "Maybe I'm Amazed" is played backwards, a recipe for "a really rippin' lentil soup" can be heard.

That would be funny enough on its own, but this was the golden age of "The Simpsons," so that wasn't the end of it. An edited version of "Maybe I'm Amazed" plays over the episode's credits, and, when played backward — what d'you know? — there's Paul reading off his lentil soup recipe. He finishes it off by adding, "and by the way, I'm alive," a reference to the ubiquitous "Paul is dead" rumors. As recipes go, it's a fairly simple one, but, like other recipes from "The Simpsons," it's undeniably filling and satisfying — just be sure not to skip this step when cooking lentils. Maybe we're amazed.