Confessed inside trader Jon Horvath couldn’t remember which of his recommendations at hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors were based on illegal information — and which were not.

In fact, some of Horvath’s best calls came “the old fashioned way” — by doing “legitimate, proper research analyst work,” defense lawyer Barry Berke told jurors Wednesday, as he continued to hammer away at Horvath in a second day of brutal cross-examination.

Horvath is the government’s star witness against his former boss and SAC portfolio manager Michael Steinberg, who is on trial at Manhattan federal court on inside-trading charges that could send him to prison for up to 20 years.

The crux of Horvath’s testimony is that his illegal stock tips from another hedge fund analyst, Jesse Tortora, were fed to Steinberg, who knew they weren’t kosher.

But on Wednesday, even Horvath didn’t seem to recall when Tortora’s information crossed the line into criminality.

Berke honed in on information Horvath got from Tortora toward the end of 2007.

“Do you believe you were getting illegal inside information in December of 2007?” Berke asked, rephrasing the question and repeating it at least a half-dozen times — eliciting different responses each time.

“I don’t know exactly when it started,” Horvath said once. “I don’t remember how I viewed it at the time,” he said another.

When Horvath met with prosecutors in 2012 before confessing to insider trading, he told them he didn’t believe the late-2007 Tortora information was specific enough to constitute insider trading.

The trial continues Thursday.