I would suggest that a “minimal Perl” should include only basic data-structure manipulation ... list utilities, character-set support ... but that, really, “the Perl core is quite small-enough already.”   The inevitable problems of code-size arise, not so much from the Perl core, but the way in which the various CPAN modules were built.   Any contributor was free to use whatever tools and other-packages that s/he wished, and every one of those did the same.

Systems like PHP, which mostly compile-in everything that you're likely to use, produce multi-megabyte executables.   Perl and its ilk, which are modular, use about the same amount of code.   Either way, more code is brought-in than might be called “minimally necessary,” but I frankly think that efforts to reduce that footprint would have negative results, because it would run the serious risk of de-stabilizing code that is already known to work.   Even if a particular well-tested package is quite bloated, indeed, if it makes your expensive programmers more productive and your expensive software more stable and reliable, that’s what really makes a measurable ($$) difference.