enlarge Meredith Goad/Staff Writer

Chandler Burr, perfume critic for the New York Times, and Lawrence Klang, executive chef at Natalie’s restaurant at the Camden Harbour Inn, discuss the evening’s menu for the “Perfect Scent Dinner.”

CAMDEN — Hmmm, it's a little sweet but not in a cloying way. There's a richness there, but also a freshness.

Just what it is I'm smelling I'm not sure, but the scent is very familiar.

The knowledge of what I've just whiffed tickles at the back of my brain, but the fragrance is so pleasurable my neurons are rebelling. They're telling me to put the overthinking to rest already. Let go of your neurotic need to know and allow us to wallow in this for a couple of minutes.

"When I tell you, it's going to snap into sense," says Chandler Burr, the perfume critic for the New York Times.

Then he reveals what's right under my nose: It's raspberry.

Of course.

I know what you're thinking: "You couldn't identify raspberry? What are you, an idiot?" But trust me, it's harder than you think.

Burr was at the Camden Harbour Inn last weekend to host "The Perfect Scent Dinner," an interactive evening that introduces your taste buds to your olfactory senses. It was the second year the inn and its well-regarded restaurant, Natalie's, have offered the dinner as a special Maine Fare event. This year, I was fortunate enough to be there.

Much of our sense of taste is tied to our sense of smell, and the scent dinner allowed about 20 people who paid $285 each to experience that connection in the most fun way possible. Burr provided the scents. Lawrence Klang, executive chef at Natalie's, followed them up with a dish inspired by what we had just smelled. There were nine courses altogether, served over a period of four hours.

"It's really like a master class," Raymond Brunyanszki, one of the owners of the inn, explained just before the evening began.

There were no menus. That would spoil the suspense.

Among the diners joining me Saturday night were Maine cookbook author Cynthia Finnemore Simonds, who was taping the dinner for inclusion in a TV cooking show she is developing; Ben Alexander, one of the owners of Portland's Maine Mead Works, who provided mead to pair with one of the dessert courses; and several representatives of Cellardoor Winery, which contributed most of the wines for the night.

Burr, author of "The Perfect Scent: Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris & New York," said his objective was to introduce us to gourmand culinary scents, such as the vanilla of Shalimar. Some of the scents were natural, some synthetic; he challenged us to try to tell the difference.

"Perfumers are the only artists in the world that have raw materials that never existed before," Burr said.

We sampled 10 scents and their components over the course of the evening. Here's how each round went: Burr paired us off, then gave each pair a narrow strip of paper laced with the scent he wanted us to try. Typically we sniffed three scents that made up a particular perfume. Then we tried smelling the perfume so we could see what the three different scents became when combined in just the right way.

Afterward, Chef Klang sent out a course inspired by the scent.

I went into this event feeling fairly confident because I've always been told I have an extraordinary sense of smell. When I was a kid, my family used to make fun of my habit of smelling food before I ate it. I can tell what my colleagues are having for lunch from the other side of the building.

Boy, was I humbled by this experience.

Sure, there were some scents we all got right away. Vanilla was easy. So was lemoncello. And it was actually kind of scary how quickly my brain cells detected the familiar odor of coffee.

But then there was the one that smelled kind of like butterscotch but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Or the one that, according to Burr, was supposed to mimic the smell of a green branch that had been crushed. The coriander did not smell like coriander to me, and a strip that smelled like it had been dipped in a jar of olives turned out to be geranium leaf.

I...