Well, I don't know about TDE menu favorites as you describe, but here are some
workaround ideas that may fill a similar need well enough:
1. Use the "Application Finder" fuzzy search program from Xfce as a faster way
of accessing the specific programs you want. I personally installed TDE on top of an
existing installation of Xfce and haven't seen any compatibility issues so far (though
I am new to TDE and haven't used Linux for years until recently, so I may be wrong in
some subtle ways potentially).
2. Create a simple folder entitled "Favorites" on your desktop and then place
symbolic links and/or hard links and/or application launchers and/or shell scripts running
the required commands in there so as to thereby provide yourself with basically the same
thing as what you describe, just on the desktop icon grid and file browser instead of in
the start menu.
3. Figure out how to edit the menus in TDE. In Xfce there is an XML based syntax you can
use to create your own menu systems and it even includes both statically and/or
dynamically filled menu items (whichever you prefer for each sub-menu) if you set it up
right. Perhaps TDE has something similar. I am new to it though, so I don't know.
Anyway, sorry for not knowing the actual answer that you seek, but I think you will find
that one of the three above options provide ~90% to ~95 percent of the kind of easy
accesibility that you want.
Hope that helps!
TDE is awesome and I really love the 1990s to 2000s era freedom-respecting (and not overly
minimalistic) nature of it! It is the best-feeling overall Linux desktop environment
I've encountered.