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There's nothing quite like a ripe, succulent tomato, sprinkled with a dash of salt and a splash of olive oil.

If you're like most of the population, you probably store your tomatoes in the fridge - but by doing so, you could be doing them a disservice.

This is because a tomato's earthy aroma comes from a unique and delicate reaction between enzymes in the fruit.

A tomato's earthy aroma comes from an enzymatic reaction that produces a sulphuric, grassy smell. Harold McGee's scientific food reference book 'On Food and Cooking' claims that this reaction is damaged as soon as a tomato goes into the fridge

Harold McGee's scientific food reference book 'On Food and Cooking' claims that this reaction is damaged as soon as a tomato goes into the fridge.

San Francisco-based Mr McGee highlights that tomatoes originally come from the warm deserts of South America's west coast, and so shouldn't be stored at arctic temperatures.

Jenni Avins in Quartz argues that without its earthy smell, the joy of eating a vine-ripened tomato is ruined.

In a separate report in Business Insider, Catherine Renard, a senior researcher at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research agreed that tomatoes should never be stored in the fridge.

While the cold environment of a fridge doesn't change a tomato's sugar content or acidity, it does make the fruit's flesh become grainy and unappealing

The average temperature of a home fridge is around 4.4°C (40°F). But according to one of Ms Renard's studies, tomatoes don't cope well in temperatures under 10°C (50°F).

While the cold environment doesn't change its sugar content or acidity, it does make the fruit's flesh grainy and unappealing.

Ms Renard suggests tomatoes can instead be reliably stored for a week in a cool and light part of the kitchen.

Other produce that stores better on a counter top that in the fridge includes potatoes and onions.

Cold temperatures turns the starch in potatoes into sugar which makes them strangely sweet when cooked.

Onions, like tomatoes, become soft in the fridge and they tend to impart their flavour to surrounding products.