jQuery - setting the selected value of a select control via its text description

Question

I have a select control, and in a javascript variable I have a text string.

Using jQuery I want to set the selected element of the select control to be the item with

Answer 1

This accepted answer does not seem correct, while .val('newValue') is correct for the function, trying to retrieve a select by its name does not work for me, I had to use the id and classname to get my element