Stephen Berman <stephen.berman@gmx.net> writes:

> With my current build from master, when my ~/emacs.d/recentf file
> contains an entry that uses ssh to connect to another machine and this
> machine is offline when I start Emacs, then Tramp repeatedly tries to
> connect to that machine.  [...]

I suspect that this is due to

commit c753e4cb2a2a5998626d48d85071c047cbab6c54
Author: Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se>
Date:   Thu Jun 23 11:00:19 2022 +0200

    Use shortened filenames in recentf-mode
    
    * lisp/recentf.el (recentf-filename-handlers): Set to
    'abbreviate-file-name' to get shortened names by default.  (Bug#56123)

'abbreviate-file-name' tries to establish a connection for remote file
names.