Can’t remember recovery contact

Since you DO already appear to have access to your old AppleID , I’m not sure a recovery contact will be of much help.

They are only used to recover access to your AppleID.

As it sounds like you are talking about local device passcodes/passwords; the following articles might be useful:

An iOS / iPadOS device can only be reset (erased) and then recovered from a backup.

If you forgot your iPhone passcode - Apple Support

A MacOS device has a few more options:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202860

I don't know if this is the most efficient way but in the first part of this article Help a friend or family member as their account recovery contact - Apple Support

Tap Get Recovery Code.

it would seem you could just scroll through your Contacts until you find one that is listed as one where you can request a recovery code.