Which selector do I need to select an option by its text?

This could help:

$('#test').find('option[text="B"]').val();

Demo fiddle

This would give you the option with text B and not the ones which has text that contains B.

For recent versions of jQuery the above does not work. As commented by Quandary below, this is what works for jQuery 1.9.1:

$('#test option').filter(function () { return $(this).html() == "B"; }).val();

Updated fiddle

You can use the :contains() selector to select elements that contain specific text.
For example:

$('#mySelect option:contains(abc)')

To check whether a given <select> element has such an option, use the .has() method:

if (mySelect.has('option:contains(abc)').length)

To find all <select>s that contain such an option, use the :has() selector:

$('select:has(option:contains(abc))')

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