The geophysical position, the climate, the soil formation, the crops, the natural resources of each region (geographical factors), along with the types of economic development but also with the relations and contacts with other cultures, either through trade or through conquests and enslavements (historical factors), were the parameters that will ultimately shape the economic, social and cultural identity of each place.

A classic example is the fate of four neighboring islands of Lesvos, Chios, Samos and Ikaria that formed completely different cultures and had completely different fortunes.

Ikaria, a barren island full of wild mountains, has been a place of exile since antiquity, it lived an isolation that today redeems it as a model place with an alternative life away from development. Samos and Lesvos, the first with its timber and wines and the second with olives and livestock developed an economy - the second much more developed - that was connected to the opposite coasts of Asia Minor, while Chios thanks the famous Mastic monopoly developed a global trade network that pushed it to create the most powerful merchant fleet in the country.

This chapter will briefly describe the geographical and historical factors of each examined area, in order to form the general framework for the formation of its economic and cultural identity.

Many cultures have flourished in Greece since antiquity, samples of which will be found scattered throughout the country and which confirm a continuum of life, culture, cultures and tastes. Food and delicacies from Antiquity pass to the Romans, from there to Byzantium, to the Ottoman Empire and reach today. Flavors, recipes and techniques are borrowed from neighboring cultures and returned as a counter-loan. At the same time food is transported from the East, to the new countries of America and they renew the local cuisines.

Despite the cosmogenic changes over the course of twenty-five centuries, the introduction in Greece of dozens of new crops, the homogenization - in the last century - of cultural characteristics and the leveling of international standards, the Greeks still enjoy, like their ancestors, the tripe, the souvlaki, the gardoumba, the lentils, the bean soup, the fish, the shellfish and the seafood, the pies and meatballs, the raisins, the honey, the almonds and, from the fruits, the figs, the pomegranates, the quinces etc.

The geophysical location, the climate, the soil morphology and the natural resources of each region, along with the contacts with other places (conquests, enslavement, trade, cultural relations, population movements), are the parameters that will finally shape the gastronomic identity of each place. Coexistence in areas with populations of different eating habits, such as Jews, Armenians, Slavs, Albanians, mobility of nomadic populations such as Sarakatsani and Vlachs, occupations by Arabs, Venetians, Genoese, Genoese, Genoese, , the great movements of the Greeks of Asia Minor, Pontus and Constantinople were decisive for the evolution of local gastronomic habits.