That sounds reasonable, but I can't figure out how to use entryconfigure to add child commands under the top level menu entry. If you can show me or point to a minmal working example it would be a huge help.

Update: AHA! It turns out that entryconfigure IS usable to do what I am trying to do, it is just that the syntax of the command is quite arcane. I pieced this together from bits found in several places. Many thanks to spurperl for steering me in the right direction.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Tk;
use Tk::Text;

my $top = MainWindow->new;
my $text = $top->Text->pack(-expand  => 'yes', -fill => 'both');
my $menu = $text->menu;

add_my_menu_item($menu, 2, 'bogus', $text);

$top->configure(-menu => $menu);
MainLoop;


sub add_my_menu_item{
    my ($menu, $index, $name, $widget) = @_;
    
    $menu->insert($index, 'cascade', -label => $name, -menu => $menu->
+entrycget($index, '-menu')->Menu( -tearoff => 0 ));
    
    my $entry = $menu->entrycget($index, '-menu');
    
    map (
        $entry->command
           (
            -label       => $_,
            -command     => [sub {$widget->insert('insert', $_[0])}, $
+_],
           )
    ,(qw/1 2 3 4 5/)
    );
}
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