<p>Molasse is one of the oldest tectofacies terms still in use today. The term has been properly introduced into geology in 1825 and the present article seizes the opportunity of its 200th anniversary to review the history of molasse. This is done from a primarily tectonic point of view. During the nineteenth century, the use of the term was mostly restricted to its type area, the northern foreland basin of the Alps and the historic evidence leaves no doubt that the geologists of these days considered molasse as the syn-orogenic detritus of the actively deforming Alps. This idea also survived the nappe tectonics revolution of the 1890s and 1900s and became firmly embedded within mobilist tectonic schemes of the 1910s and 1920s. During a more conservative and fixist phase of tectonic research (the “Dark Intermezzo”, ca. 1930–1965), the molasse concept was exported to North America, Greenland, and other areas, and molasse sedimentation became almost generally viewed as a post-orogenic feature. It was only with the breakthrough of the plate tectonic theory and its application to problems of orogeny and sedimentation that the original idea of molasse as representing an essential part of active orogens was partly reinstated. However, still today, the Dark Intermezzo occasionally casts its shadows into publications all over the world which results in a misleading application of the term molasse. This review thus ends with the proposal of guidelines of how to use molasse within the context of modern comparative anatomy of orogenic belts.</p> Graphical Abstract <p></p>